Full text of "Alexander Hamilton"

See other formats

Google

This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project

to make the world's books discoverable online.

It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject

to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books

are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that's often difficult to discover.

Marks, notations and other maiginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book's long journey from the

publisher to a library and finally to you.

Usage guidelines

Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the
public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing tliis resource, we liave taken steps to
prevent abuse by commercial parties, including placing technical restrictions on automated querying.
We also ask that you:

+ Make non-commercial use of the files We designed Google Book Search for use by individuals, and we request that you use these files for
personal, non-commercial purposes.

+ Refrain fivm automated querying Do not send automated queries of any sort to Google's system: If you are conducting research on machine
translation, optical character recognition or other areas where access to a large amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encourage the
use of public domain materials for these purposes and may be able to help.

+ Maintain attributionTht GoogXt "watermark" you see on each file is essential for in forming people about this project and helping them find
additional materials through Google Book Search. Please do not remove it.

+ Keep it legal Whatever your use, remember that you are responsible for ensuring that what you are doing is legal. Do not assume that just
because we believe a book is in the public domain for users in the United States, that the work is also in the public domain for users in other
countries. Whether a book is still in copyright varies from country to country, and we can't offer guidance on whether any specific use of
any specific book is allowed. Please do not assume that a book's appearance in Google Book Search means it can be used in any manner
anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liabili^ can be quite severe.

About Google Book Search

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers
discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web

at |http: //books .google .com/I

ALEXANDER HAMILTON

MAKERS OF AMERICA"

ALEXANDER HAMILTON

WILLIAM GRAHAM SUMNER, LL.D.

PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL AND SOaAL SCIBNCB IN YALB UNIVBRSITY

Our National Government, — the Rock of
our Political Salvation

Hamilton's Works, VII. ^8

NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD, AND COMPANY

Publishers

All rigkU reserved,

426825

• • •■

, • IP •• » *

John Wilson and Son, Cambridge.

PREFACE.

There are already a number of good biographies
of Alexander Hamilton, of different sizeis and planned
for various uses. The political history of the first
three administrations has also been carefully studied
and well described from various points of view.

I have noty therefore, written a biography, nor a
history of the times of Hamilton.

The notion suggested by the title of this series,
when taken in its most positive and concrete form,
defines my task. I have undertaken to show haw^
and in what sense, Alexander Hamilton was one of the
makers of this American State, I have constructed
my book with just that and nothing else in view.

On page 13 my view of the subject is stated in a
proposition, or thesis.

I have spent especial care and pains on an exposi-
tion (Chapters II. to VII.), as full and circumstantial
as space would permit, of the defects and faults of
American public life between 1765 and 1780. This

IV PREFACE,

exposition forms the background of the picture. I
count on it to give to all the rest the effect which
I think that it ought to have.

On page 102 I have stated the propositions about
the relation of the man to his work, which seem to
me to give the clew to Hamilton's career.

Hamilton's work went to the making of the Ameri-
can State, but personally he may be said to have
failed ; for when death overtook him he had no poli-
tical future, and could have had none, unless he could
have readjusted himself entirely to the conditions of
American public life. On pages 238, 241, 244, and
245 I have tried to show why this was so.

I have subjected Hamilton's opinions on economic,
and more especially on financial, matters to a thor-
ough examination and criticism. His attainments
and his achievements in that domain have been
greatly exaggerated.

After I had finished my book and arranged the
citations of opinion and judgment about Hamilton at
the end, it occurred to me to look and see what
Hildreth had said about him. I found that Hildreth
had suggested a view of Hamilton's career which
coincides in the essential point with that presented by
me. His view is quoted in the last paragraph of this
book.

PREFACE, V

In order to use the briefest possible form of cita-
tion of authorities, yet give the reader the full titles in
the most convenient manner for reference, I have
put at the end of the volume a list of books cited, in
the alphabetical order of the brief forms of refer-
ence used in the course of the work. This list is not
a bibliography.

W. G. SUMNER.
Yale University,
October, 189a

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER L

PAGBS

Birth, Parbntagb, and Youth 1-9

CHAPTER 11.
Features of American Public Life, i 765-1 780. L

The Colonial System. — Relations of England, France, and the
American colonies under it. — The significance of the revolt
in world hbtory. — The English Constitutional Law of the
coTonists 10-36

CHAPTER in.

Features of American Public Life, i 765-1 780. IL

Taxation. — Social discord and mobs resulting from quarrels with
the mother-country. — Social revolution combined with the
revolt 37~52

CHAPTER IV,

Features of American Public Life, i 765-1 780. III.

Persecution of tories. — Outrages. — Spurious patriotism . . 53-61

via CONTENTS.

CHAPTER V.

Features op American Public Life, 1765-1780. IV.

Defects of the Measures for coercing England and carrying on
war. — Commercial War. — The second impulse of common
sentiment. — Continental Currency 62-73

CHAPTER VI.

Features of American Public Life, 1765-1780. V.

Tyranny of committees. — Executive committees of Congress. — »
111 effects on military and financial administration. — Factions
in Congress. — Factions among foreign representatives . . 74-91

CHAPTER VII.

Features of American Public Life, 1765-1780. VI.

Lack of discipline in the Army. — Social disintegration. — Sec-
tional dislike. — Youthfulness a national trait .... 92-103

CHAPTER VIII.

Hamilton's military service ; Earliest financial
schemes; Service in Congress; Assistance in the
administration and reform of the finances . 104-125

CHAPTER IX.

The treaty of peace; Tories; The Constitutional
Convention of 1787; The struggle for the rati-
fication OF THE Constitution; Hamilton charged
with monarchism 126-143

CONTENTS. IX

CHAPTER X.

Hamilton's measures: Funding; His political econ-
omy ON DEBT, ETC.; ASSUMPTION; PARTY WAR; ThB

sinking fund ; Criticism ; National bank ; Polit-
ical ECONOMY OF BANKS ; BANK WAR ; MiNT AND

Coinage 144-171

CHAPTER XI.

The Report on Manufactures; The political econ-
omy OF IT ; The logic of the position of the United
States as to trade i72->i83

CHAPTER XII.

Hamilton's contests with Jefferson and Madi-

son; Party virulence; Hamilton's policy and

methods 184-190

CHAPTER XIII.
The excise; The Whiskey Rebellion 191-199

CHAPTER XIV.

The standing of the United States in the- family
of nations : Commerce ; Resentment toward Eng-
land ; Obligations toward France ; Difficulties
of neutrality; Grouping of parties on foreign
relations ; Jay's mission ; Hamilton a minister
without portfolio 200-224

CONTENTS,

CHAPTER XV.

State op war with France ; The provisional Army ;
Hamilton's position in it 225-230

CHAPTER XVI.

The election op 1800 ; The catastrophe of the
federalists ; hamilton's latest views and sen-
TIMENTS 231-245

CHAPTER XVII.

The ANTAGONISM OF HAMILTON AND BURR ; ThE DUEL;

Hamilton's funeral; Comments on the duel and
duelling; Comments op friend and fob on Ham-
ilton's CAREER 246-260

List of Authorities 261-267

Index 269-281

ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

CHAPTER I.

BIRTH, PARENTAGE, AND YOUTH.

Ltttle is known about the birth and parentage of
Alexander Hamilton. He did not leave a clear and
authentic story about it to his descendants. Accord-
ing to their tradition, however, he was bom in the
island of Nevis in the West Indies, Jan. ii, 1757.
When he was killed, Gouvemeur Morris, noting the
event in his diary, remarked that he was of illegiti-
mate birth. Among his contemporaries this was
the current story. By some notes which were pre-
pared by Timothy Pickering for a Life of Hamilton,
which are produced by Lodge from the Pickering
Papers, this story is traced to the West Indies.^ In
a letter to Jefferson, in 18 13, John Adams called him
the " bastard brat of a Scotch pedler." * Callender
called him " the son of the camp-girl." • Such were
the amenities of public life in those days.

In Hamilton's letters there are several family letters.
Although they show that he was by no means in con-

1 Life of Hamilton, Appendix.

* Historical Magazine, July, 1870. * Prospect, 82.

2 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

stant intercourse with his family, yet they are affec-
tionate, and especially show strong filial regard for his
father. In 1 785 he wrote to his brother James, who
had begged his assistance. He cordially promises it,
and goes on to ask about his father. " It is an age
since I have heard from him or of him, though I
have written him several letters. Perhaps, alas ! he is
no more, and I shall not have the pleasing opportunity
of contributing to render the close of his life more
happy than the progress of it. My heart bleeds at
the recollection of his misfortunes and embarrassments.
Sometimes I flatte myself his brothers have extended
their support to him, and thatj-he now enjoys tran-
quillity and ease \ at other times I fear he is suffering
in indigence. Should he be alive, inform him of my
inquiries. Beg him to write to me, and tell him how
ready I shall be to devote myself and all I have to his
accommodation and happiness." ^ In 1792 we find
him seeking the aid of a New York banker to send a
letter to his father, who, as he has heard, is in dis-
tress. In a statement of his affairs which he pre-
pared for his executor in 1795, ^® mentions that
there are two small bills drawn on him by his father
which are unpaid. His father is in distress. He
adds : " Though, as I am informed, a man of re-
spectable connections in Scotland, he became, as a
merchant, bankrupt at an early day in the West Indies,
and is now in indigence."^ In 1797 he writes that
he has urged his father to come to this country, but
that the latter fears the change of climate. "The

1 Works, viii. 166. 2 jbid, 351.

BIRTH, PARENTAGE, AND YOUTH, 3

next thing for me," he says, " is, in proportion to my
means, to endeavour to increase his comfort where he
is." ^ In the same year he writes a bit of autobiog-
raphy to a relative in Scotland who has opened a
correspondence with him. He was separated from
his father at an early age, by the latter*s bankruptcy,
and thrown upon his mother's relatives, who were then
well off, but have since suffered misfortunes. He came
to the United States at the age of sixteen, and at nine-
teen took the degree of bachelor of arts at the College
of New York.* The last letter which he ever wrote
was one to his wife recommending to her a lady, un-
derstood to have been his mother's sister, to whom he
says that he was under great obligations which he felt
that he had not duly discharged. He had sent for
her to come to the United States, and he begs his
wife to receive her as a sister.

According to the family tradition his mother was of
French descent, and died when he was very young.

The reason of his being sent to the United States
was that he had given some evidence of literary ability.
There is a very amusing letter extant written by him
when only twelve years old. It has a stilted, eighteenth-
century style. It is written to his comrade Stevens, who
had already gone to New York to study. In it he
reveals the vanity of genius, and at the same time
seems to blush and apologize for it. He says that his
ambition is his predominant trait, " so that I contemn
the grovelling condition of a clerk or the like, to
which my fortune, etc. condemns me, and would

1 Works, viii. 465. 2 Ibid., 463.

4. ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

willingly risk my life, though not my character, to
exalt my station. ... I mean to prepare the way
for futurity." He wishes there was a war.^

In October, 1772, he arrived in Boston, and went
from there to New York. As a school and college
boy, he was, of course, intensely interested in the ex-
citements of the day. At the " meeting in the fields,"
July 6, 1 7 74, to consider the Boston Port Bill, he made
a speech. The resolutions of the meeting were
strongly in favour of a non-importation agreement or
commercial war.

Immediately after the session of the Continental
Congress of that year, Seabury, afterward bishop, pub-
lished, over the signature " A Westchester Farmer,"
a criticism of its proceedings, in two pamphlets, •—
" Free Thoughts on the Proceedings of the Continen-
tal Congress," and " Congress Canvassed by a West-
chester Farmer." They were very able pamphlets,
and set out that side of the question with great power.
The " Farmer " said that non-intercourse would fiall
first on ourselves. " It will be more severely felt by
us than by any part of his Majesty's dominions, and
will affect us the longest." EngHsh merchants would
find new lines of trade if they lost the American trade.
"Our malice would hurt only ourselves." In this
criticism of the means proposed he was perfectly
right. Hamilton replied to him in an anonymous
pamphlet, which was ascribed at first to Jay. It is
called " A Full Vindication " of Congress. It is a
summary, by a clever school-boy, of the leading

1 Works, vii. 472.

BIRTH, PARENTAGE, AND YOUTH. 5

points in the popular discussion of the day. His
second pamphlet, however, in the same controversy,
" The Farmer Refuted," is far more strong. He is
driven back to a more thorough and comprehensive
defence of his position. According to the fashion of
the times, he seeks this in natural rights, and in a^
construction of English and colonial history. '' The
fundamental source of all your errors, sophisms, and
fisdse reasonings," he writes, '^ is a total ignorance of
the natural rights of mankind. . . . The sacred rights
of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old
parchments or musty records. They are written, as
with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human
nature, by the hand of the Divinity itself, and can
never be erased or obscured by mortal power." It
;would be interesting to know what he thought of this
rhetorical sophism, if he ever read it over again, —
for instance in the days of GenSt and Adet.

He goes at length over the arguments about charters
and the English Constitution, reaffirms the efficacy of
commercial war, and declares that other powers would
help the colonies, being induced by the promise of
free trade. He admits the right of England to regu-
late trade by the Navigation Acts, but thinks that this
is why she should not tax the colonies for revenue.
All these notions were commonplace at the time
among the whigs, but they appreciated the vigour and
skill with which Hamiltorf set them forth. In the
course of his argument, however, he was led to more
than one position of which he would himself later
have strongly disapproved. For instance, he would

6 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

certainly have denounced this as rank jacobinism if
he had met with it in the literature of the Whiskey
Rebellion : " When the first principles of civil society
are violated and the rights of a whole people are in-
vaded, the common forms of municipal law are not
to be regarded. Men may betake themselves to the
law of nature ; and if they but conform their actions
to that standard, all cavils against them betray either
ignorance or dishonesty." ^

The next year he wrote a pamphlet against the
Quebec Act. The grievance in this matter was one
of the most doubtful among those of which the col-
onists complained. The Act gave to the Canadi-
ans French law, and an endowment for the Roman
Catholic religion. The Americans objected to this,
but still more to the vast extent of territory west of
their own boundaries, — all between Pennsylvania, the
Ohio, the Mississippi, and the Lakes, — which was thus
in a measure shut against them, in disregard of claims
which they entertained under their charters. On the
face of it the colonists must, pn their own principles
of local self-government, admit that if the Canadians
were satisfied, right was done, and the other colonies
had nothing to say in the matter ; ^ and although
there might be dispute about the title to the land be-
tween different provinces, the mere size of the terri-
tory was no more against the claim of Canada than

^ Works, i. 129.

2 In the "Address to the People of England" (1774, by
Jay), it is said that England had no right to set up the
Romish religion or arbitrary government " in any quarter of
the globe."

BIRTH, PARENTAGE, AND YOUTH, 7

against that of Virginia, but there wac an intention to
shut up the old English colonies to the sea-coast. It
took Wedderbum to blurt it out. He said that it
was necessary to restrain emigration, and to prevent
the Americans from spreading into the continent,
"for the advantage of the empire."^ Thus it was
another of the schemes to sacrifice colonial interests
to some other interests foreign to themselves.

The next spring, 1776, when Congress sent a com-
mission to Canada, to try to persuade the Canadians
to join them, the latter replied that they had been
well treated by the English, and were satisfied. They
had before them the address of the colonies to the
people of Great Britain in which very offensive epi-
thets were applied to the Roman Catholic religion.^

Hamilton's argument on the Quebec Act was the
usual one of the Americans at the time. No one
developed the point, for public discussion, about the
subjection of the interests of the colonies to those of
the mother-country, although the Americans had a
complete instinct of it.

We next find Hamilton acting in two mobs in a
manner far more consonant with his later tone of
mind. He helped to save the President of the Col-

1 Cavendish, 57.

3 Carroll's Diary, 30. Hare, who was in Canada in 1774,
before the Quebec Act was passed, says that the Canadians
appealed either to English or French law, according to which,
for the moment, would best suit their interests, and that they
hated the English. The Act was a good stroke of policy for
England. Cavendish shows that it was treated in England
entirely as an English party struggle.

8 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

lege, who was a tory, from a mob at the time that the
"Asia" fired on the city, and he interfered against
a mob which threatened one Thurman for conduct
which had displeased them. He also expressed
strong disapproval of the exploit of Sears and a
party from New Haven, who made a raid on New
York, destroyed Rivington*s press, carried off hig
types, and kidnapped Seabury and two or three other
loyalists on their way home.

According to the dates given, he should have grad-
uated in 1776; but as he was writing for the whig
newspapers, and became more and more occupied
with public affairs, he began to study artillery, and
was made captain of the Artillery Company, March
14, 1776. In this capacity he 'earnestly and success-
fully advocated promotion for merit.^

From this point his career in the American world
began. It was a great career, because it had some
pervading ideas, and they were not ideas of personal
interest or ambition. He became the representative
of union and energy. His admirers applauded him,
and his enemies abused him, as an apostle of energy
in government. Why should a man find a r61e as an
apostle of energy? The answer lies in the most im-
portant features of the social and political situation
in this country at the time. To understand this
we need to study the notions of the parties to the
colonial system about that system; the reaction on
the Americans of the doctrines which they set up to
justify their resistance to Great Britain without going

1 Proceedings of the Provincial Congress of New York, 123.

BIRTH, PARENTAGE, AND YOUTH, 9

out of the empire ; the social disintegration produced
by the methods which they adopted to secure inde-
pendence ; and the lack of discipline and organization
in colonial life. The net result is that the whole civil
organization declined; The Union exerted a reme-
dial and discipHnary influence, but was for that reason
forced to come in conflict with all the elements of
disintegration.

10 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

CHAPTER II.

FEATURES OF AMERICAN PUBUC LIFE, 1765-1780. I.

The Colonial System. — Relations of England, France, and the Amer-
ican colonies under it. — The significance of the revolt in world
history. — The English Constitutional Law of the colonists.

No one appears to have examined critically the
opinions, pretensions, and methods of the American
colonists in the pre-Revolutionary period, to see how
far they were right. The EngUsh never very seriously
debated the doctrines put forward by the Americans
before the war. After it was over, they had no inter-
est ever to think of the matter again. Americans,
after the fight was won, had no motive to go over its
principles again. It has seemed ever since enough
to indulge the patriotic faith that the principles were
sound and the doctrines correct.

It is not now intended to make any such critical
examination. In truth, the literature of that period
is indescribably dull. It is astonishing how far the
writers kept from the facts and the evidence. This
is so much the case that it is often impossible to learn
what was really the matter. They set traps of techni-
calities for their adversaries, but took Hcense for
themselves from the " principles of the English Con-
stitution " and the all-embracing theory of natural

FEA TURES OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE. 1 1

rights. It would be a great task to unravel all this,
and the fruit would not be worth the labour. Never-
theless, the neglect to discriminate between the differ-
ent notions which were accepted at such a critical
period, and the habit of treating them all with the
same sanctity, does mischief. We have all sorts of
political and social conventicles nowadays, in which
declamation and dogmatism avail themselves of " the
great principles of the Revolution."

Every great social movement inevitably presents a
mixture of noble and sordid elements. Its methods
are very often impure, and its watchwords are very
sure to be half-truths. When the crisis is over, how-
ever, and the days of orderly growth come again, the
sordid element must be eliminated, the methods of
agitation must be laid aside, the rhetoric and decla-
mation must be toned down, and the half-truths must
be dissolved.

The American States had a gre^t deal of this work
to do. As we shall see, there were large elements
of error and abuse. We desire to see of what kind
they were. It will be a good and fair test of politi-
cal theories to ask: Would they be tolerated now?
Would we consider them good law and good state-
craft now? For we must note that our territories
are our colonies. It is singular to what an extent
laws and political devices have been affected by the
circumstance that regions were contiguous or were
separated by water. The case before us is one such.
Our new territories are lands owned by the Union
either by discovery, purchase, conquest, contiguity, or

12 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

some of the other modes in which states have taken
possession of outlying territories. The Union pos-
sesses both the property in the soil and the political
jurisdiction, and it asserts its right and authority quite
as tenaciously as ever any monarch did. The terri-
tories are open to new settlement, — that is, coloniza-
tion. The terms are liberal, but they are such as the
sovereign, the Union, sets and allows. It holds a
firm veto on territorial legislation beyond the limits of
the concession which itself has made. It appoints
all the important officers. It would not for a moment
tolerate a movement of independence, — that is, of
secession. It grants no representation. It imposes
taxes, — both protective and revenue taxes. In our
case the colonies when they grow up are incorpo-
rated in the mother body, and obtain full constitu-
tional equality of rights and privileges. No doubt we
might have experience of some of the difficulties of a
colonial system if it were not for this last fact.

If therefore we ask whether we should consider a
proposed arrangement practicable and expedient as
between the Union and a State, or as between the
Union and its colonies, we have a good test for the
question what was reasonable and practicable between
the colonies and Great Britain. It is immaterial to
this purpose that the colonies were not represented,
while the States of this Union are \ for what we want
to see is, what was consistent with the integrity of the
empire, assuming that it was to continue, and that
some adequate constitutional device could be invented
to satisfy the demand for representation.

FEATURES OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE.

For our present purpose, however, this test has a
greater value, which must not be passed over. When
the States got their independence, they had broken a
restraint. They were " free," in the sense of being
left without any other political ties or restraints than
those which they put upon themselves, in their own
constitutions. In the States, then, the elements of
revolutionary dissolution and decay began to work;
and when the rectifying operation of peace and order
came to be applied, it was the Union, the imperial
unity, the great political body which could figure in
history and in the family of nations, through which
the disciplining and organizing work went on. There-
fore the Union was from the start at war with the
turbulent^ anarchistic elements which the Revolution
had set loose.

It was no accident that the integrity of public
credit was involved in that struggle too. Financial
integrity is a test of political institutions. Whenever
they decay or are corrupted, the evil manifests itself
in financial abuses. The financial vice of our Revolu-
tionary period was repudiation, both public and
private. It was the States which were the stronghold
of it : it was the Union which had to combat it.
Therefore the contest with anarchy and repudiation
was the great work which went to the making of this
nation at the end of the last century^ and Alexander
Hamilton was one of the leading heroes of it

This may serve as a thesis of what we have to show.
We state it here in order that the reader may understand
the scope and pertinency of the facts we bring before

14 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

him to the purpose in view. When he has learned to
see the contests of that day in their true significance,
he will have no trouble in tracing the same conflict
down through later history. Shays's Rebellion, the
Whiskey Rebellion, New England disunion, nullifica-
tion. Dorr's Rebellion, secession, have been incidents
in the process by which constitutional order has
gradually extended its power over the lawlessness
and undisciplined turbulency which prevailed at the
beginning.

The first task, then, is to see what the real state of
things was.

Life in the colonies in the middle of the eighteenth
century must have been dull in the extreme. The
elements of intellectual activity were few, and were
confined to a small circle. Under such circum-
stances trifles become magnified to great importance,
if they furnish interest and a little excitement to fill the
vacuum and relieve the tedium of a dull existence.
Therefore, under such circumstances gossip is an im-
portant engine, personal feelings and interests enlist
neighbours and friends. Cliques are formed ; feuds
grow up ; quarrels distract church and town meeting.
The fervor is due, not to the magnitude of the stake,
but to the intensity of the feeling which has been
aroused. Such a society presents very strong con-
trasts, which appear quite inconsistent with each
other. It is at the same time dull and apathetic on
the one side, that is, upon a matter in regard to which
it has not yet been awakened, and on the other side
in the highest degree volatile in regard to a matter

FEA TURES OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE. 1 5

to which its nerves have been quickened. The pre-
Revolutionary and Revolutionary periods illustrated
these features abundantly.

The first common sentiment which moved a num-
ber of colonies at the same time was the dread of
the northern and middle colonies of the power of
France. They held that it was a struggle to the
death for the possession of the continent ; ^ and the
one thing on which they could be got td show some
sentiment of sympathy and common interest was the
conquest of Canada. When, in the Revolutionary War,
Canada did not join them, and they saw it once more
under a separate interest from themselves, we have
already had occasion to notice how they undertook
to conquer it, following therein the worst traditions of
that old European statecraft against which they were
revolting. The same feeling was active still in the
second war with England.

A war between England and France was therefore
always popular, at least in the northern colonies, be-
cause it offered chances to conquer Canada. It is

^ An illustration of the popular opinion is afforded by a letter
of 1758, by Shippen, of Philadelphia. If France holds Cape
Breton, she will one day drive England from the continent. She
must be completely conquered. (Balch, Penn. Letters, 128.)
" It has been said, on good authority," that Franklin brought
about the expedition against Canada, and Wolfe's victory. ** In
all companies and on all occasions he urged the reduction of
Canada as an object of the utmost importance. It would inflict
a blow upon the French power in America from which it could
never recover, and which would have a lasting influence in ad-
vancing the prosperity of the British colonies." (Franklin,
i. 248.)

1 6 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

not trae that the colonies were drawn into European
disputes against their will and interest. On the other
hand, the ideas of statecraft and political economy
which prevailed in Europe turned about the same
contest. Since the beginning of colonization the
Europeans had been elaborating a system of policy
with regard to the administration of colonies which is
not yet by any means exploded, but which is one of
the leading specimens of human folly, imposed by
authority to deprive millions of men arbitrarily of
chances which they might have had on earth. That
system of policy is nowadays passed over as dead
and gone.^

The colonial system grew out of the application of
1/ mediaeval notions of trade to a system of commerce
with outlying continents. It was entirely constructed
from the European standpoint.

Europe was the head of the world. The outlying
continents were to be organized as its subordinate
members, and governed from it according to its in-
terests. At the same time there was a contest between
the nations of Europe, especially between England,
France, Holland, Spain, and Portugal, as to which one
of them should get and enjoy most of the advantage
to be won from the exploitation of the outlying conti-
nents. That struggle, of course, turned into an effort
on the part of one to get supremacy, sole domin-
ion, a ^^ sole market," and of all the others to com-

^ It is a remarkable omission that there is no chapter on the
colonial system in Winsor's History. It has changed its form
somewhat, but is not by any means dead, as we shall see below.

FEATURES OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE.

bine to prevent any one from succeeding in that
attempt. As Spain, Holland, and Portugal declined
in power, this contest turned into a rivalry of France
and England. The doctrines of the system made war
always popular with the merchant class. That class
has often been stigmatized as basely fond of peace
and order. They were not so in the eighteenth cen-
tury, and they allowed only short intervals of peace.

The object was to conquer colonies so as to aggran-
dize one's self and put down one's rivals by appro-
priating and monopolizing "trade," — that is to say,
the opportunity of exchanging with the inhabitants of
a certain part of the earth's surface. So far as the
system succeeded, therefore, it carved up the globe
into portions, attached to the several nations into
which Europe was divided; and as they were jeal-
ously separated from each other by prohibitions and
restrictions on trade, as each of them was constantly
striving to increase its force for war with the others,
the whole body was made up of warring units, each
composed of a European nation and its colonial
dependencies.

The value of colonies was supposed to consist in
the power to coerce them into selling their products
only to the mother-country, and buying what they
wanted only from the mother-country. The notion
was carried out to its fullest development, namely, that
if you can get the political jurisdiction of a territory,
you want to trade with it, not simply by permitting
absolute freedom, but by enforcing absolute freedom,
and you must not let it trade with anybody else at all \

1 8 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

but if you have not the political jurisdiction, you can-
not expect to trade with it, because its sovereign will
not let you. For instance : While France owned
Canada, Canadians must trade freely with France, and
not at all with Englishmen. When England got
Canada, Canadians must trade freely with English-
men, not at all with Frenchmen. Plainly, it might
be for the interest of Canadians to trade with both all
the time. If it was so, because each had what the
other wanted, the colonists broke the system so as to
carry on illicit trade with the other country. Thus
the system contained two obvious absurdities. The
efforts to monopolize trade destroyed production, and
constantly made less and less for anybody, which is the
result of all violence ; secondly, each nation which
maintained the system for itself was all the time trying
to break down the same system of others. In fact,
the illicit trade must never be lost sight of in discuss-
ing the matter. If the system ever could have been,
or ever had been, actually enforced, according to the
laws and ordinances on the books, it would have pro-
duced ruin. It never was so enforced even approxi-
mately. It was broken and defeated on every side by
bribery, collusion, and chicane.

The navigation system was an adjunct of the colo-
nial system or a part of it. It is plain that the above-
described arrangement could only be enforced by a
great naval power. The Navigation Acts had for their
purpose to monopolize the canying-trade and the
shipping. The rules of it were elaborated in detail,
with the object of maintaining a mercantile marine

FEA TURKS OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE.

out of which a naval marine could at any time be re-
cruited ; in the cant of the system, " a nursery for
seamen." The navy was to defend the mercantile
marine, the colonies, and the products during trans-
portation. This operation was to secure the national
wealth, and the national wealth was to be taxed to
maintain the navy and all the rest of the establish-
ment. It was confidently believed that this total
combination produced a wise and stable system, the
parts of which concurred in contributing to the gen-
eral wealth. Its fatal defect was that it restricted
growth. The parties spent their strength in quarrel-
ling for the possession of a sixpence, when they might
each, by the same effort, have produced a pound.

The systems of policy which statesmen adopt are
always founded on some assumed doctrine in regard
to the immutable relations of things on this earth,
arising from the facts of human nature and of earthly
existence, — that is, what are properly called natural
laws of the social order. A statesman who did not
have some theory or doctrine of human welfare, ac-
cording to which he supposed that he was planning
his arrangements so as to attain his purpose, would
not be a practical man ; he would be a fool. It is
immaterial that the theory he accepts may come to
him by tradition, that he may regard it as ratified by
experience, and may repeat its maxims parrot-like.
The eighteenth-century statesmen had adopted a set
of economic doctrines deduced from the notion that
only one party wins in an exchange ; namely, that one
who gets money on balance. They did not have any

20 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

doctrine of capital, and did not understand what capital
was. They therefore confused money and capital, as
well as money and wealth. They believed that the
way to increase the wealth and economic power of a
state was to increase its stock of the precious metals,
and that, to do this, the only way was to bring it about
that that state should export more merchandise than it
imported, so as to draw from other nations gold or
silver for the difference. Of course, on this theory,
the nations won wealth only at the expense of each
other, and a system of economy and statecraft founded
on war and national hostihty was the inevitable de-
duction. In their social affairs men have almost al-
ways been relentless in their logic, when once they
have fixed their big dogmas at the bottom. They
certainly were so in the development of the so-called
mercantile system.

It followed, from the dogmas just stated, that a
"state " was the real agent in wealth production. The
talk was all the time about " making the country rich."
It was in and through the political unit that an individ-
ual would prosper. The political unit might be a pro-
duct of feudal warfare, royal marriages, or any other
historical accidents. Nevertheless, being an historical
fact, its citizens must hope only by and through it to
prosper. The welfare of all therefore hung on the wis-
dom and power of the kings and statesmen who admin-
istered and directed the action of the state. The
functions of these latter were of transcendent impor-
tance. Their art was elaborated accordingly. These
theories are by no means extinct. They have been

PEA TURES OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIPE. 2 1

robbed of a few of their most absurd corollaries, and
the state-craft founded on them has silently and
reluctantly relinquished a few of its most irrational
oppressions. For the most part, it maintains itself
intact in practice, and strives to find justification by
new philosophic inventions of political dogma.

The American colonists accepted the current theo-
ries and maxims. They read with dissatisfaction the
doctrines of Child and Wood and Gee about colonies
and Colonial policy, for it could not please them to
note how calmly they and their interests were ignored
in the discussion of what colonies were when viewed
from the standpoint of the mother-country, and what
ought to be done with them from the same standpoint.
In fact, the English writers between the middle of the
seventeenth century and the middle of the eighteenth,
pursued their discussions of expedient policy for Eng-
land with no more attention to the political ideas of
the colonists than we now give to the political ideas
of the Indians, and they did not have that philanthropic
interest in the colonists which we have in the Indians.
The colonists, however, always yielded the right of
England to regulate trade.^ We have seen that Ham-

1 In a long statement of American grievances by Charles
Thomson, in 1765 (Thomson Papers, 7), the most important
points mentioned come under the Navigation Act. In a letter
to his son, in 1768, Franklin thinks that he who would dispute
the right of Great Britain to regulate trade would stand on
firmer ground than Dickinson in admitting it (Franklin, vii.
392) ; but in public he admitted it guardedly. He said that the
Americans ^agreed to the Navigation Act as to the use of Eng-
lish ships, but wanted the regulation of trade to be truly
adapted to the good of the whole empire (Franklin, v. 7). In

22 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

ilton, on the very verge of independence, admitted the
propriety of the Navigation Acts. All did the same.
There never was any resistance or dispute on that
point. The navigation system, however, was their
greatest real grievance. Their real great oppression,
of which other things were only details, was that they
were governed from the other side of the world.
They could not get attention to their needs and in-
terests, although they were not allowed to do what
their own imperative interests required, without per-
suading the home government to allow it.^ That
meant that they had not adequate self-government ; in
other words, that they needed independence.

No such situation could be expected to clear up to
a distinct and logical recognition of the truth. The
colonists pelded to the limitations of the colonial sys-
tem because they believed in the doctrines on which
it was built. They admitted that these limitations
were for the good of the whole empire. They prided

the Congress of 1774 a discussion arose on the Navigation Act^
Five States favoured allowing the regulation of trade; five op-
posed ; two, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, were divided
(Adams, ii. 397). In the address they consented to it (Journal
of Congress, i. 28). R. H. Lee said that to strike at the Navi-
gation Acts would unite all England against the Americans
(Adams, ii. 363). Perhaps this is the reason why they never
took issue on that point openly.

1 Lord Essex told Walpole that Grenville lost America be-
cause he read the American despatches : that there was a closet
full of them in Newcastle's time unopened. This might pass
for a smart speech ; but the unopened despatches must have
been the grave of a great many colonial interests. ( Walpole,
George III., i. 278.)

FEA TURES OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE, 23

themselves on being Englishmen, and on their loyalty
to the King, and sacrificed their interests to a patriotic
phrase or two, just as the system assumed that they
would do. Some misgivings of course arose. The
facts and the doctrines would not agree. What they
saw and what they had always been told contradicted
each other, but in that case they sought a bias. They
consented to the restrictions of the system for the sake
of the empire, but refused to be taxed for revenue,
and demanded that any incidental revenue should go
to the colony in whose ports it was collected. The
English always scouted this distinction as a sophistical
refinement.^ The colonists had first objected to in-
ternal taxes, but consented to import duties. Then
they distinguished between import duties to regulate
commerce, and import duties for revenue. They
seemed to have changed their position, and to be
consistent in one thing only, — to pay no taxes and
to rebel. We may be able to discriminate between
duti es to re yilate commerce and duties for revenue,
which the Enghsh said that they could not do, but we
cannot understand why the colonists should consent
to the former, while they objected to the latter, on the
ground that they were not represented in Parliament,
The former were far more capable of abuse against the
interest and welfare of the colonies than the latter, and

* Pitt said (1765) : "I cannot understand the difference be-
tween external and internal taxes. They are the same in effect,
and only differ in name. That this kingdom has the sover-
eign, the supreme legislative power over America is granted.
It cannot be denied. Taxation is a part of that sovereign
power." (Prior Documents, 60.)

24 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

they therefore needed representation for defence
against the former even more than against the latter.

In this connection the English formula that Parlia-
ment " gives and grants " taxes to the crown was
extremely important. An English legislative assem-
bly, by the very language of the Act (1767), gave
and granted to the crown property of colonists to be
taken in taxes on their consumption of paper, paints,
and glass.

The conquest of Canada and the exclusion of
France from the North American continent was the
event which broke up the old order and led to its
dissolution.^ In fact, the old system ran to its own
dissolution by the development of its own elements.
In the seven years' war France and England joined in
another grand struggle in the prosecution of their
rivalry with each other, which could not permit a rest.
The war ended with the humiliation of France and
the complete success of England. She had then
won the object of ambition, sole dominion, and espe-
cially control of the sea. Among the pet maxims
of the prevailing system were, "Trade follows the
flag," and " He who rules the sea will rule the
land," — good illustrations of the emptiness and
power of such sayings. It then remained to harvest
the advantage of what had been won. The object of
sole dominion was of course monopoly. What had

^ T. Townshend, Jr., suggested that it might be well for
England to give Canada back to France. (Cavendish, 16.)
Turgot argued that it was a good thing for France that she
did not own Canada. (Turgot, ii. 555.)

FEA TURES OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE. 25

been won was useless uiriess it could be treated in
such a way as to exploit it.

The best students of current events had foretold,
even before the seven years' war, that the effect of
sole dominion would be utter disappointment, because
it must defeat itself.^ The exploitation of it would
make the colonies revolt against it. The English
feared this ; and the measures which they adopted,
which constitute the detailed grievances of the colo-
nists, were of three kinds. They tried to stop the
illicit trade, to get a revenue from the colonies which
should make the latter contribute to the power of
Great Britain, and they planned measures to reduce
the colonies to more direct administrative depend-
ence. The measures under the last head were insidi-
ous, and their real aim was concealed under plausible
pretexts of good government and efficiency. Such
were the laws to make the colonies support troops, and
to draw taxes from them out of which the mother-
country should pay judges and the chief civil officers.
On the face of the, matter these measures were all
good, and the colonies appear refractory and un-
reasonable in resisting them. It is in their hidden
purpose that the wrong lies. These measures, in con-
nection with the tax measures, would have reduced

1 In 1750 Turgot, then twenty-three years old, delivered a
discourse at the Sorbonne, in which he said : " Colonies are
like fruits which cling to the tree only until they are ripe.
When they suffice for themselves, they do as Carthage did,
and as America will do some day." (Turgot, ii. 602.) There
are also very remarkable passages in " L'Ami des Hommes "
(1756), pt. ii. 181 ; pt. iii. 6.

26 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

the colonies to satrapies. Every step in regard to the
colonies after 1763 was a matter of party struggle
and political advantage in England/ and also a
matter of sordid interest on the part of those who
wanted to " remove the burden of a tax to distant
shoulders." ^

The revolt of the American colonies was therefore
an incident of commanding importance in the history
of the world. It was a break in all the accepted
traditions of political economy and statecraft. Fred-
erick the Great spoke of it, perhaps with greater
significance than he understood himself, as "this
crisis in the affairs of Europe, ^^ * It had intimate re-
lations with the politics of all the nations of Western
Europe, and even of Poland. It would never have
taken place if the government of England had not
been suffering from vices which had corrupted King,
Cabinet, and Parliament all at once, on account of
the King's attempt to establish personal rule, the sub-
serviency of his ministers, and the corrupt use of
money by him to influence elections to the House of
Commons. If the King had succeeded in the con-
quest of the colonies, which was his personal meas-
ure, his power would have been established, whereas

1 Pownall, Administration, ii. 3.

2 Walpole, George III., i. 278. See also ii. 26. Speaking
of Grenville, he says ; " Thus did this pedler in revenue con-
found the tranquillity both of America and Great Britain."
In " Last Journals," iL 360, he says that the country gentlemen
had connived at all the violence against America in the hope
that a revenue from thence would lessen the land tax.'

8 Circourt, iii. 79 (in March, 1777).

FEA TURES OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE,

by his failure it was ruined. Hence it is no fanciful
idea of those who say that the revolt of the colonies
saved the English Constitution. Frederick also noted
this element at issue in the revolt.^

The Americans were therefore admitting the theory
by virtue of which they were oppressed, while fight-
ing the applications of it. Probably this is the reason
why they never could make any rational theory of
their opposition. They claimed the rights of free-
bom Englishmen and the guarantees of the English
Constitution, but they were forced to find some means
of defining which acts of Parliament they would ac-
cept, and which not. This it was impossible to do
by any other criterion than that they would accept
those which they were willing to submit to, and others
not. In order to evade and deny the authority of
Parliament, they sometimes construed the relation to
the empire to consist in a relation to the King only,
as if. he had been Kling of England, Ireland, Massa-
chusetts,* etc. However, they had no idea of thus
making crown colonies of themselves, and so they
set up the charters against the King, or they turned

1 Circourt, iii. 130, 176.

2 "George III. was obeyed in Massachusetts as King of
Massachusetts, not as King of Great Britain." (Sec Joum.
Cong., iii. 197; in 1782.)

* Their arguments often ^ent the length of maintaining that
the charters were perpetuities, and that they created sovereign-
ties, as if the King, in a charter, had ceded away property and
jurisdiction completely. Franklin tried to deduce the powers
of the Pennsylvania Assembly from those of the House of
Commons, bat he was told that the Assembly had no powers

28 ALEXANDER HAMILTON, .

against the Ministry as the party at fault.* When this
argumentation became complicated, and was found
to involve consequences on one side and the other
which they were by no means ready to accept, they
had recourse to "natural rights," which - invariably
extricated them from all difficulty.^ These same
difficulties appear in every attempt at reconciliation
which was made. There never was a proposition of
that kind made by either side to the other of which a
modem student could say that the other side ought
to have accepted it, as a fair settlement of the diffi-

but those given in the charter. (Balch, Penn. Letters,
no.) When the States got independence, they made short
work of some charters ; for instance, that of Pennsylvania.
The other charters had to be set aside by great effort ; for
instance, in the matter of the western lands. Pownall thought
that the charters ought to be respected, but he ridiculed the
inference that Parliament, the great council of the empire, had
lost ** censorial or remedial power of self-preservation." (Ad-
ministration, ii. 105.) In 1782 Shelburne said that the charters
were ^* sottises.** It would have been well if the States could
have considered them so. It would have saved much trouble.
(Circourt, iii. 46.)

1 April I, 1776, Washington wrote "the King's troops,"
saying that he would no longer keep up the distinction 01
"ministerial." (Reed's Reed, i. 180.)

'-^ Bentham opposed the independence of the United States
on account of the badness of the arguments they used. " The
whole of the case was founded on the assumption of natural
rights, claimed without the slightest evidence for their exist-
ence, and supported by vague and declamatory generalities."
(Bentham, x. 57, 1827.) The report of a debate in the Com-
mittee on Rights, Grievances, and Methods of Redress in 1774
(Adams. II. 370) shows how hard it was to agree on a theory
to which to refer their enterprise for justification.

FEA TURES OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE, 29

culty. This is especially the case with regard to the
propositions of the Americans ; for they never made
one which would have given reasonable hopes of
smooth and satisfactory operation, — never one which
we would to-day consider as free from objection, if it
were proposed as a system for the relations of our
States and the federal Union. As we shall see, the
federal Union has had to establish itself by overcoming
the very notions which caused those conditions to be
inserted in the schemes of reconciliation with Great
Britain.

After examining all their discussions and disputes,
we throw them all aside as really unprofitable and
useless. The case was not in the interminable pam-
phlets, addresses, petitions, and negotiations. The
case was that the colonies were no longer afraid of a,
powerful neighbour. They could be independent;
they dared to be independent ; the time had come
for them to be independent. In what form the issue
would present itself was not essential. The question
for a colony always is : I s the protecti on and patron-
age wor th the d ependence and submissionT*^ It is
Co" come "lo Uiy llmtJ when it answers in the
negative, unless the relation turns so that the
mother-country suffers injustice by it. After all the
argumentation - was exhausted, the issue which did
arise was one of "principle." The English main-
tained a right to hold the colonies subject to Parlia-
ment as the supreme legislature of the empire,
including the power of taxation ; and the Americans
denied the right of Parliament to tax them at all.

3© ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

When all the wrangling about rights has been ex-
hausted on a political question, it comes down to this :
Has any one the means to prevent you from doing
what you want to do ? or, Have you any power at your
command to prevent your opponent from doing what
he wants to do? After t he colonies had ov errnme
the sentimental tie of loyaL txadkion. they were ready
to break away and be independent.^ Could Great
Britain hold them?

Frederick the Great and other wise lookers-on
thought it madness to provoke the quarrel, or, having
provoked it, to try to conquer by force.^ In a paper
which was thrown into Franklin's gate at Passy^it was
described as the plan "of catching two millions of
people in a boundless desert with fifty thousand
men." ^ The things which made it impossible were
the ocean, the distance, the wilderness, and the
climate."*

The most important point to note, however, is that
the revolt of the colonies was a reaction of the pre-
vailing system against itself. We have seen in Hamil-
ton's pamphlet against the "Farmer" that he ex-
pected other powers to intervene to aid the colonies
against Great Britain. The fi rst mo tive for this lay in

1 In 1768 Kalb reported to Choiseul that the Americans
were loyal to Great Britain ; that they proposed nothing but
commercial war, and that the interference of any other nation
would drive them back at once to a reconciliation with the
mother-country. (Kalb, 288.^

2 Circourt, iii. 91, 165, 174.

3 Durand, 279.

* Johnson's Greene, ii. 393.

FEA TURES OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE, 3 1

the hatred which was felt by all the other nations
toward Great Britain for the arrogance of her be-
haviour since she had won " sole dominion." Fred-
erick was extremely bitter against her, and was very
eager that the war might go on, to keep her from in-
terfering with his own selfish and unjust schemes.*
Spain was eager to do England an injury, and France
was ready to seize an opportunity to throw off the
humiliation of 1763 (some details of which, such
as the presence of an English commissioner at Dun-
kirk, were especially galling to her), and to recover
her place among nations.* The second force which
was expected to come into play, and which was also
mentioned by Hamilton, was far more important. It
was the offer of free trade to other nations as an
inducement to them to help the colonies. All this
was the most natural application of the received
opinions. The English had always said that their
colonies were an invaluable possession. They be-
lieved it. The colonies had therefore come to be-
lieve themselves invaluable to Great Britain. The

1 Circourt, iii. 27, 209.

2 France watched the American colonies for ten years before
the Revolution broke out, anticipating the moment when they
would give her a chance of revenge on England. In 1764
Pontleroy was sent over, and in 1768 Kalb, to report on the
sentiments, opinions, and resources of the Americans. A
great amount of information was obtained and stored away
which came into use in 1776. In 1767 Franklin wrote to his
son that the French ambassador was courting him. He hoped
that the Americans and English would give the French no
opportunity to stir up trouble between them. ( Franklin, vii.
3.S7.)

32 ALEXANDER HAMILTON:

Other nations had always envied Great Britain her
colonies, and had supposed them of great value to
her.^ This was not true, however, except upon the
grounds of the received political economy, and it
was an application of that political economy, not a
denial of it, when the colonies said : If we revolt,
we can dispose of ourselves (this valuable possession
which we have always been), and we will offer our-
selves in friendship, alliance, and commerce as a
means to get aid. Thus they and all the other par-
ties to the affair, while reasoning from the colonial
system, helped to ruin it.^ The Americans used that
system, instinctively not intelligently, to get England
to drive France out of North America for them.
Then, by the notions of the same system, they got
France to help them win independence of England.
They were the only ones who were not duped, not
because they duped the others, but because their
situation made their doctrinal error ineffective for
them, while it remained effective for the others.

1 George Chalmers (Strength of Great Britain, 1804) declared
that the revolt of the colonies was brought on largely by the
factious assertion that England could not get on without the
colonies, and by the opinion of France and Holland to that
effect.

2 In 1768 Choiseul was planning, with Count ChStelet, to
hurt England by joining Spain in overthrowing the colonial
system and admitting the products of North America to the
French and Spanish colonies. That would have been a mas-
terly assault on the traditional falsehood of the situation, by
an appeal to the tinith of the situation, but it involved far too
wide a breach with all accepted ideas. Force of knowledge
and will could not be collected to carry it out. (Kalb, 70.}

FEA TURES OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE, 33

T here were very few who correctly measured the
significance of the revolt in the light of the new ideas.
If it meant that colonies were no longer to be treated
as plunder, it meant that the globe was no longer
to be partitioned out among themselves by the na-
tions of Europe. There was no longer to be a head
with dependencies, but America was to be a new
member of the family of nations, having equal rights
with all the rest.

One man at the time saw this with wonderful dis-
tinctness. That was the French economist and states-
man, Turgot. He was called upon, in 1776, for an
opinion on a memoir which had been submitted to the
King by Vergennes on the policy to be pursued with
respect to the revolt of the colonies.^ He thinks that
the colonies are sure to win their independence. If
the English should conquer the sea-coast, it could only
be by devastating it. The Americans could then re-
treat to the interior and harass the English on the
coast ; or, the Americans will bend while force is on
them, only to spring up again at the first opportunity.
Assuming then that independence is inevitable, he
says : " This event will certainly be the epoch of the
greatest revolution in the commerce and politics, not
only of America, but also of all Europe." In answer
to the question whether the Americans will become
warlike, if the war lasts a long time, he answers that he
thinks not. He thinks that they are peaceful. Wages
are too high among them for manufactures to flourish,
and they will not care for ships unless English ideas

1 Turgot, ii. 551.
3

34 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

prevail. Then he takes up the question as to the ef-
fect of the independence of the colonies of England
upon those of other countries, especially those of
France, of which the only important ones remaining
we^e the sugar islands. All European states which
have colonies, said he, must either engage in constant
war to keep them, or the colonies must be allowed
complete freedom of commerce. " Then the illusion
in which our politicians have been lulled for two cen-
turies will be dissipated. Then we shall appreciate
the exact value of those colonies which are called
* commercial colonies,* whose riches the European
nations have planned to appropriate by reserving to
themselves the exclusive right to sell to them and buy
from them. We shall see how precarious and fragile
was the power based on this monopoly, and perhaps
we shall see by the smallness of the change which we
experience, that it was equally empty and chimerical
at the time when we were the most dazzled by it.**

In 1780 Thomas Pownall published a pamphlet on
the significance of the American Revolution, which
he called a " Memorial to the Sovereigns of Europe
on the Present State of Affairs between the Old and
the New World.** Pownall knew America well. He
had been Governor of Massachusetts and New Jersey.
He was completely emancipated from the balance of
trade notions, and in this pamphlet thoroughly ex-
posed the fallacy of the notion that America could
never grow great because the balance of trade was
always against her. He declared that the sovereigns
of Europe might recognize the fact or not as they

FEA TURES OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE. 35

chose, but it was certain that the Americans would
maintain their independence, and that their appear-
ance on the stage as an independent nation would
force an entire reconstruction of the systems of policy
hitherto in vogue. He said that England and France
might fight as to which of them would hold America
in its dependence, but that America would be depen-
dent on neither. He had sanguine expectations of
the glorious consequences which he thought would
ensue, but which have not ensued. He did not doubt
that if the old restraints and obstacles with which he
was familiar were removed, then all must flow on
rightly and prosperously. He did not know what
new restrictions and obstacles would grow out of the
new movement itself. This pamphlet is a magnificent
forecast of the possibilities of America. As w^ shall
see below, Americans did not cut themselves loose
from European compUcations, did not claim an equal
place in the family of nations, and did not appreciate
their own destiny until after the second war. They
have never yet realized that destiny in the simplicity
and with the power with which this man perceived it.
These are the wider aspects of the American revolt
which present its majestic features. It is when we
turn to its narrower and domestic aspects that we
meet with some less attractive features. Indeed, eril
elements were not wanting in the grander aspects.
The attempt at independence provoked surprise and
doubt. An outlying continent independent of Europe,
but possessed of an inheritance of European culture :
* what would that be like ? What place would there

36 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

be for it? What changes and dislocations would it
produce? There was much speculation on all these
questions in camps and courts, counting-houses and
academies. Of coiurse there were also eager thoughts
on the question, what could be gained from it for this
one and that one. The new state was not yet created
when it began to be beset by adventurers and specu-
lators, who were eager to win profit from it.

For our present purpose, we have to notice that in
the ten years before the Revolution, all the traditional
ideas of political economy and all the traditional doc-
trines of political philosophy and constitutional order
were thrown into confusion, and mixed with numerous
crude and fallacious notions, without reaching any
new and positive results in either field.

FEA TURES OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE. 3 7

CHAPTER III.

FEATURES OF AMERICAN PUBUC UFE, 1765-1780. H.

Taxation. — Social discord and mobs resulting from qoarrels with the
mother-country. — Social revolution combined with tlie revolt.

It is a difficult thing to collect taxes in any com-
munity where the industrial organization is low.
Modem taxes strike the products in transfer ; and the
greater the number and variety of the relations be-
tween men with respect to goods, the greater the
number and variety of possible taxes. If a man lives
on his own farm, consumes his own products, makes
with his own hands most of his necessary utensUs,
etc., and if his wife spins and weaves, he need have
very few transactions with his fellow-men. Barter
with his neighbours will suffice for the personal and
mechanical services which he needs. It is only in
case he wants tea, coffee, sugar, spices, metals, etc.,
that he goes into the world's market at all. The
easiest way to tax him is by import duties on these
last things. In the situation described he needs little
money, and will have but little. If he is taxed on
tea, sugar, etc., he can provide for the payment of
the tax just as he prondes for the payment of the

38 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

price, however that may be. The English, therefore,
tried to use these taxes in the colonies.*

The next way to tax such a community would be
by taxes on land and on polls, or by excises on spirits,
tobacco, or other domestic products which, not being
universally produced in households, must pass through
the market. These taxes, especially the first two,
bring the pressure of taxation home to the tax-payer
with great directness, and they call for the use of
money. The mother- country did not try to use these
taxes. If she had done so, it would have brought her
authority into every household. The colonists never
had any experience of her power or authority in any
immediate and personal way. The colonies, however,
always experienced great difficulty in raising revenue
for their own internal affairs, and one of the reasons
constantly given for paper money was the need of a '
medium in which taxes could be paid. Kalb reported
that all the colonies were in debt after the seven years'
war.^ This made more taxation necessary than for-
merly. In 1 766 Franklin, in his examination before
the House of Commons, stated that there were taxes
in Pennsylvania on real estate, polls, business profits,
an excise on spirits, a duty on negroes, and some
other duties.* He said that the amount of revenue
of Pennsylvania at that time was 20,000 pounds ster-

1 Hamilton argued, in the " Federalist," that the best taxes
for the United States were import duties and excises, especially
the former, which he thought free from some unpopular features
of the latter (Works, ix. 69, 124).

2 Kalb, 291. ^ Franklin, iv. 162.

FEA TURES OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE, 39

ling, and that there were 300,000 men in that province
between sixteen and sixty years of age. The latter
may then be taken roughly as the number of house-
holders, and the tax was one third of a dollar on a
family per annum.

The English then, in their attempts to get revenue
from the colonies, met with very great difficulties in
the nature of the case. They turned from the indus-
trial organization to the operations which go through
the courts, or require legal proceedings, and devised
the stamp tax.* It was the best tax they could have
devised for the case they had to deal with, and the
purpose they had in view. The colonists were liti-
gious. The stamp-act Congress alleged against the
stamp tax that the freeholds were small and the trans-
fers frequent ; hence that the tax would be very bur-
densome. If there was to be a tax, that was just why
this one would solve the economic difficulty of getting
a revenue out of that community. The revenue ex-
pected from the tax was 100,000 pounds sterling.^

The methods taken by the colonists to resist this
tax consisted in suspension of the operations which
were to be taxed, refusal to pay debts to Englishmen,
and a boycott on English goods ; also a boycott of all
persons who should accept the office of stamp distrib-
utor. Walpole says ^ that the first three were effec-

1 According to a note by Dawson (The Sons of Liberty in
New York, 42), a stamp tax was proposed in New York, as a
means of revenue, in 1734, and the project was renewed from
time to time between that date and 1760.

2 Prior Documents, 38.
• George III., 303.

40 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

tive. They were all, except the boycott of English
goods, anti-social, and calculated to encourage dis-
order and a dissolution of civil institutions. If any
one, or a number, chose to abstain from the use of
English goods, in an effort to accomplish an object,
no objection could be made to such a course. It
might prove futile, but that was their affair. The sus-
pension of all the functions of the courts was, how-
ever, quite another matter. Debtors found license.
The experience of the advantage to them which could
come from social disorder was not thrown away upon
them. In 1 768 John Adams noted the danger aris-
ing from this cause, but resolved to tell the people the
whole truth and brave the danger. A party of debtors
was forming out of these experiences.^

The refusal to pay debts to Englishmen had the
same effect. It was a welcome experience to a great
many people that one could refuse to pay debts, and
thereby win popularity and a reputation for patri-
otism. The riotous destruction of stamps and the
coercion or abuse of the stamp officers were modes
of mob rule. Those proceedings interested and occu-
pied the idle and irresponsible people in the towns.
It would never be very difficult to collect a crowd, for
the fun of inflicting personal annoyance on some vic-
tim, but in those days people had a great deal of
leisure. No business required the steady occupation
to which we are now accustomed in almost every
occupation. People took life easily. A little excite-
ment was very welcome. The serious men also stood

^ Adams, ii. 214.

FEA TURES OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE. 41

back and allowed the mischief to go on for the sake of
the cause. One is astonished at the whole behaviour
of the representatives of civil order and authority
in all these cases. They acted like tutors put, with
inadequate authority, in charge of spoiled boys. We
should to-day think any magistrate criminally guilty if
he should act as Bernard and Hutchinson did when
the latter were loaded with epithets of tyranny and
oppression.

There was no police, and the militia either partici-
pated in the disturbance or sympathized with it.
Consequently, when disorder broke out, it ran its
course, or the sober people tried to persuade the
others, or to give a turn to the affair which should
direct the mob spirit in some harmless course.

The system of resisting the law by preventing any-
body from accepting an administrative office under it
was also a notable device which involved not a few
social dangers. The correspondence of Ingersoll, the
tax-officer at New Haven, with a committee of his
fellow-citizens, was published in full. It shows the
temper of this method of procedure. He was met at
Wethersfield and forced to sign an abdication of his
office ; but he reserved the right to take it up again,
if the efforts to secure a repeal of the law should fail,
since it was no worse that he than anybody else should
have the office, if the tax must be collected.^

* R. H. Lee drafted articles of association for the citizens of
Westmoreland, Virginia, against the Stamp Act, threatening
undefined pains and penalties against any abandoned wretch
who should contribute to introduce the Act. He established a

42 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

From the stamp-tax riots, then, must be dated a
very positive relaxation of social order and growth of
mob spirit. The excuse for the methods employed is,
that no attention could be won in England in any
other way. This excuse may stand, although it is
doubtful how far the abuse of tax-collectors in America
affected Englishmen. The social effect was, in any
case, an incidental evil.

The destruction of the tea was another act which
had no rational cgnnection with the purpose in view.
It was the destruction of the property itself, about
which a tax quarrel was pending. It was an act of
mob violence, and destruction of property. Its effect
to secure an abolition of the tax was not apparent.
The only excuse for it that could be made was that it
was really an act of war, a first step in overt resist-
ance to law, against which it was intended to employ
all means, even military resistance. In that view,
however, it ought to be regarded as an act of war,
entirely outside of constitutional resistance, or any of
the methods of peace and order, and ought not to be
held up to our children as a laudable and glorious act
in the heroic period of our history. It would be in-
teresting to know how many times within a hundred

sort of vehmgericht for enforcing the articles. (Lee's Lee, i. 34.)
A case is described of a Virginian who said that he would use
stamp paper, and had accepted the office of stamp-collector.
R. H. Lee summoned the associators, went to the house of
this person, and coerced him to swear that he would not exer-
cise the office, and to give up the paper, which was burned.
(Ibid., 36.) See, in Life of Robert Morris, the case of the tax-
officer at Philadelphia.

FEATURES OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE, .43

years that act has been quoted as a precedent by
people who were engaging in some act of lawlessness.

The Boston Massacre, likewise, turns out upon cool
examination to be anything but an incident to be
proud of. If we should hear that some boys and
street-idlers iii the District of Columbia (which is
taxed without being represented) had insulted a sen-
tinel of the federal army on duty in Washington, had
forced him to leave his post and call the guard, and
that in the resulting mel^e between the soldiers and
the mob, some of the latter had been shot, we should
not regard the latter as victims of a " massacre.** ^

The habit of resistance and of political quarrelling
grew. To the modem reader the bickerings and
quarrels between the governors and the legislatures
very often seem factious on the part of the latter.
The Massachusetts Assembly wrote to their agent,
De Berdt, in 1768, in alarm at the proposal of an
American episcopate.^ Samuel Adams wrote to A.
Lee on the same subject, in 1771, and justified his
alarm by this piece of erudition : " The junction of
the canon and the feudal law, you know, has been
fatal to the liberties of mankind.** Another subject
of alarm was the court of probate.* The Massachu-
setts Assembly, in 1767, in their message to the Gov-
ernor, entered into an argument with him on the

1 Prior Documents, 239; Kidder's Boston Massacre. In
the Massachusetts Papers, 135, is a letter of Bowdoin and
others, expressing a fear that a false report of the massacre
might be sent to England, but their story is not given. See
Historical Magazine, January, 1869.

* Prior Documents, 174. • Adams, ii. 284.

44 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

merits of certain acts of Parliament.^ We should-
not think it a practical plan to force States to sup-
port United States troops, but we should certainly
be very indignant with any State which should treat
United States troops, shipwrecked on its coast, as
Massachusetts treated British troops in that case.*
The incidents of the growing trouble ofifer occasion
at every step for reserve in approving the proceed-
ings of the colonists. Burke said that the kind of
books which sold best in the American trade* was
tracts of popular devotion, and next, law books. He
quoted General Gage, that "all the people in his
government are lawyers or smatterers in the law, and
that in Boston they have been enabled by successful
chicane wholly to evade many parts of one of your
capital penal constitutions. . . . This study renders
men acute, inquisitive, dexterous, prompt in attack^
ready in defence, full of resources. In other coun-
tries the people, more simple and of a less mercurial
cast, judge of an ill principle in government only by
atf' actual grievance. Here they anticipate the evil,
and judge of the pressure of the grievance by the
badness of the principle. They augur misgovem-
ment at a distance, and snuff tyranny on every tainted
breeze." '

This is a very fair description of the case, only that
it allows of an ironical or unfriendly interpretation,
which might also be justified. One is often reminded,
in studying these proceedings, of the faults of young

1 Prior Documents, 127. ^ ibid, 236.

8 Quoted in Correspondence of George III., ii. 2.

FEATURES OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE.

lawyers; and it was a remarkable characteristic of
the colonists that they were fond of hanging an argu-
ment on the remote and speculative inferences from
a measure, or on the dogmatic deduction which they
called a " principle." Hence their discussions had an
extravagant and unreal character. Quincy's " Obser-
vations on the Boston Port Bill " are disappointing in
this same way. One would like to know what he had
to say about the destruction of the tea, speaking as a
lawyer and responsible man, and how he would deal
with the Port Bill as a penalty, directly connected
with that action ; but he goes off into a disquisition on
general poHtical dogmas, and when he touches on
the issue, comes down to the technicalities of a town-
meeting.^ If men have absolute natural rights, then
any regulation of those rights involves the possibility
of abuse. This gives a very broad platform for political
dissent and recalcitrancy.

Passing over all those incidents and doctrines which
will not be useful to us further on, in connection with
our immediate subject, a few words must be given
to the principle or maxim, " No taxation without
representation ; " for this dictum may still be heard
among us, and it is put forward as an absolute prin-
ciple, having the sanction of revolutionary practice
and profession. It isj pne of the formulas which came
into use in the seventeenth century among the Eng-
lish Republicans, or opponents of the Crown, and was
transplanted to America. I t wa s aimed, not at the
Parliament, but at the Crown. It meant that no

1 Quincy's Quincy.

46 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

taxes ought to be collected when parUamentary in-
stitutions were suspended. It was a part of the fight
against a king who tried to raise taxes by prerogative,
without calling a Parliament.^ It is a good illustra-
tion of the way in which political maxims, when they
become stereotyped, change their contents. There
always were whole classes of people who were not
represented in Parliament, as there are such classes
now among us. The dictum never meant that
they could not be taxed. The dictum, however, as
the colonists used it, exposed them to be answered
in just this way, namely, on the historical and legal
sense of their proposition, and it obscured to them
and others their real grievance and their real demand.
They never wanted to be represented in Parliament.
They wanted self-government, and did not want to
have their property taken from them at the will
of another commonwealth across the ocean. They
gained nothing by their alleged principle of the Brit-
ish Constitution. They would have gained much by
a plain statement in their own language of their own
case.

One inevitable effect of mob methods and lawless-
ness was that the people of estabHshed position were
repelled from the movement of the whigs. With
very few exceptions they became loyalists. In 1 7 74
Gouvemeur Morris was eager for a reconciliation. " I
see, and I see it with fear and trembling, that if the

1 In 1764 R. H. Lee tried to meet this contention by saying
that the general intention of the dictum was that the people
should be protected from all imposition.

FEA TURKS OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE. 47

disputes with Britain continue, we shall be under the
worst of all possible dominions, — the dominion of a
riotous mob." ^ When the courts were closed in
1765, John Adams wrote: " Debtors . grow insolent,
creditors grow angry, and it is to be expected that the
public offices will very soon be forced open, unless
such favourable accounts should be received from Eng-
land as to draw away the fears of the great, or unless
a greater dread of the multitude should drive away
the fear of censure from Great Britain." * Thomson
also wrote from Philadelphia that the courts and
offices of government were all shut. " Numbers of
people who are indebted take advantage of the time
to refuse payment, and are moving off with all their
effects out of the reach of their creditors." * In 1 774
Adams wrote to his wife describing the terror and
misery of a family visited by a mob. " These private
mobs," he writes, " I do and will detest. If popular
commotions can be justified in opposition to attacks
upon the Constitution, it can be only when fundamen-
tals are invaded, nor then, unless for absolute neces-
sity and with great caution."* In 1775 he was very
much alarmed about the effect on the people of disre-
spect to the judges. He says the people rarely know
what sets them in motion, or what the effect of their
action will be. He feared that Judge Oliver might
be tarred and feathered for taking the King's salary.*

1 Morris's Morris, i. 4. * Adams, ii. 155.

* Thomson Papers, 7.

* Adams's Letters to his Wife, i. 13.

* Adams, ii. 328.

48 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

He was very much dismayed when, upon his return
from the Congress of 1774, an old client, whom he
had several times extricated from difficulty, warmly
congratulated him on the glorious work of Congress
in once more suspending the courts. "Are these,
then," writes Adams, " the sentiments of such people,
and how many of them are there in the country?
Half the nation, for what I know ; for half the nation
are debtors, if not more, and these have been, in
all countries, the sentiments of debtors." ^ He
falls back, for reassurance, on confidence in the
majority.

The revolt of the colonies therefore was not simply
a separation from Great Britain. It contained a
social revolution within itself. This revolution was,
on the whole, good in its effect. Every colony was
under the dominion of a clique of pets of the Crown,
or the proprietor, or under a coterie of families,
which held together and controlled patronage. These
cliques were obstructive. They held the offices, kept
down rising merit, discouraged all new men, and '
restricted the growth of the colonies, lest that growth
should undermine their position. Those families
which had power, but did not share this feeling, be-
came whigs. The Revolution, therefore, set free new
and very vigorous social energies, which had before
been repressed ; and this was one great cause of the
^lan with which the country sprang up after the war.
However, it ought always to be a painful thing to see
social storms sweep away acquisitions of wealth and

1 Adams, ii. 42a

FEA TURES OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE, 49

■

social position.^ It may be the fault of the sufferers.
That has nothing to do with the loss to society, which
sees some work lost which had been accomplished,
and some acquisitions perish which cannot be re-
placed without new expenditure of energy, which, if
the old had been kept, might have added something
new. The great secret of social progress from the
bottom of civilization to the top is to keep what we
gain without set-backs.

The persons who became whigs, then, at the begin-
ning of the Revolution were, as to the mass, those
who had nothing to lose. That class included those
who had something to gain. Those who had some-
thing to lose took the other side. There were, how-
ever, whole districts in which nearly all were loyalists ;
and Graydon says that the lower ranks of the people
in Pennsylvania were not whigs in 1776.^ He says
that the opposition to England was aristocratic. In
the middle and southern colonies this was generally
true ; that is, the people of education and wealth first
knew what measures were being taken, and first be-
gan to set themselves in hostility to those measures.
The men of those classes, therefore, throughout the
colonies, who approved the measures adopted by Eng-

1 Madame Riedesel mentions that the officers of Burgoyne*s
army were quartered in a house at Cambridge, Mass,, one of
seven formerly owned by loyalists who had lived here neigh-
bours, in splendid mansions, with farms, gardens, and orchards,
being in the habit of daily social intercourse. The war had
forced themi all to fly, and the places were left desolate.
(Memoir, 195.)

2 Memoirs, 34.

so ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

land, or held that the colonies had no grievances, were
very few indeed. They formed no class. Hence the
distinction of whig and tory came to be drawn accord-
ing to the point at which different persons drew the
line where the means of redress proposed were con-
sidered legitimate and expedient or not, and the mob
methods weakened the cause by forcing many to the
conviction that although the grievances were real, yet
the perils of revolution were greater.

Hamilton wrote, in 1782, that half the people of
New York were not whigs at the beginning, and that
one third of them sympathized with the enemy at the
time of writing ; ^ but he had written to Jay, in 1 775,
that the whigs were in the great majority in New
York City.* Greene wrote to Washington urging
that that city should be burned. He said that two
thirds of the property in it belonged to tories.*

Sabine's " Loyalists " gives one a very decided con-
viction that the loyalists included most of the educated
and wealthy; and the best evidence goes to show
that although many persons who began as whigs
"went in,*' in the first years of the war, disgusted
especially with the lawlessness which we are noting,
the drift, after 1777, was the other way. Galloway,
who of course was not an unbiassed witriess, affirmed
that not one fifth of the people sustained the Revo-
lution from choice.* His notion was that the plotters

^ Works, viii. 69.

2 Johnston's Jay, i. 41. Winsor has a long note on the pro-
portion of loyalists (vii. 187J.
8 Amer. Arch., v. 2, 182. * Examination, 7.

FEA TURES OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE. 5 1

had raised an army, disarmed the rest, and forced
them to accede.

On accoimt of this social division, the Revolution
had to bear the weight and odium of a set of persons
who had been practising riot and lawlessness for ten
years. The years 1774 and 1775 were spent by all
in a transition from the schemes and hopes of recon-
ciliation, to the conviction that independence was the
only solution. Some reached that point a great deal
sooner than others. In this period all the bonds of
civil order were necessarily very much relaxed ; and
the agitation, which even the best were forced to
carry on, gave a cover to the worst. In 1776, after
independence was determined upon, it was necessary
to reorganize the governments of the States, and to
do this in the midst of active and unfortunate military
operations. In the interval great power had been
intrusted to local committees, who found themselves
for a time in possession of irresponsible power ; and
to these committees most dangerous functions of dis-
ciplining tories, enforcing the association, and the
circulation of the continental money, had been given,
the effect of which we will now proceed to notice.

It is^ however, already evident that all the circum-
stall^ of the period, 1765 to 1776, were highly
favourable to the development of a lawlessness and
recklessness which in a loose colonial society needed
no encouragement at all;^ also that there was one

1 Hamilton, in the " Farmer Refuted," wrote : " That there
have been some irregularities committed in America, I freely
confess,*' and proceeds to apologize for them (Works, i. 149).

52 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

interest, the debtor interest, which had a strong mo-
tive to hope that, in some way, out of the commotion
relief for them would come. We must add to this
the current declamation about liberty, which was
plainly calculated to heat the brain of all untrained
men, who eagerly accepted a theory which seemed to
mean that they ought to have their own way in the
world. Graydon, who went through it all, wrote,
when an old man : " Notwithstanding this almost
unanimous agreement in favour of liberty, neither
were all disposed to go the same lengths for it, nor
were they perfectly in unison in the idea annexed
to it. Wilkes had just rendered the term popular in
America ; and though perhaps there is not any one in
our language more indefinite, yet the sense in which
it was doubtless most generally received was that
which brings it nearest to licentiousness and anarchy,
since hallowed by the phrases of equality and the
rights of man." ' When the sober men of that day
spoke of " liberty," they often, almost unawares, meant
independence, for they meant freedom from re-
straints imposed by England. A relaxation of civil
f Order and of the authority of law, together with the
demoralization of debtors, seduced by a hope that
through civil commotion they might escape from their
contracts, were among the first domestic effects of
the quarrel with Great Britain.

1 Memoirs, 122.

FEA TURKS OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE,

CHAPTER IV.

FEATURES OF AMERICAN PUBLIC UFE, 1 765-1 780. III.
Persecution of tories. — Outrages. — Spurious patriotism.

The darkest blot on the history of the Revolution is
the treatment of the loyalists. This revolution, no
more than others, could run its course without pro-
scription, persecution, and confiscation. As we have
seen, opinion moved over from unanimous and enthu-
siastic loyalty, to the case in which a majority favoured
independence, although it was probably a bare ma-
jority of the population of the thirteen colonies. If
some did not advance so rapidly on this line as others,
they were subjected to abuse. In any such political
change there is a presumption in favour of what is, and
against revolution or innovation. The abuse of the
tories was not executed under martial law, or in the
neighbourhood of the seat of war. If such had been
the case, our judgment upon it must be different. If
the majority had forbidden the minority to take up
arms, or to give intelligence and aid, or to organize ; or
if their stricter measures had been reserved for times
and places where there was much at stake ; or if even
a regular tribunal had been charged with the duty,
even though it might be a military tribunal, — the case

54 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

would have been far different. If the whigs had been
exasperated at persons who were by turns combatants
and non-combatants, some extreme measures might
have been excused. But the case was that the pro-
scription was made general. Tories were formally
hunted by detachments. They were exposed to the
most cruel and humiliating personal abuse. They
were punished for opinions, or at most for words.
The punishments were in the hands of utterly irre-
sponsible persons or committees.

One thing which forces itself on the notice of a
student of a period like this is that nobody ever starts
out with malice and set intention to perpetrate a gross
outrage. When the truth of the matter comes out, it
is found that there was a series of antecedent and re-
taliatory outrages, which led up to the great one which
shocks everybody as inconceivably wicked. For in-
stance : The murder of Hiiddy was one of the very
worst outrages of the war. It is, however, possible
to trace a whole series of retaliations between the
whigs and tories in East Jersey, Staten Island, and
Long Island, throughout the war, which embittered
the parties against each other until this final outrage
capped the climax.^ The burning of Falmouth was
an outrage which it is hard to understand; but it
seems that in January, 1774, a subordinate custom-
house officer at that place, for conduct in the line of
his duty, for which he, as a subordinate, was not at
all responsible, but which was in the administration
of the obnoxious admiralty regulations, was most

' See Moore's Diary, i. 182, 198 ; ii. 255, 322.

FEA TURES OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE. ^^

inhumanly tarred, feathered, and otherwise abused.^
The suggestion at once presents itself that the latter
outrage furnished a motive for the former. Tryon's
descent on the towns along the Sound in Connecticut,
up to New Haven, connects itself irresistibly with the
exploit of Sears and his party, who went to New York
to destroy Rivington's press.^ The Wyoming massa-
cre was preceded by long conflicts between whigs and
tories in that region.* Brandt's expedition was alleged
to be in revenge for the invasion of Canada.

In all such cases the question is, Who began it?
That is very difficult to learn, because the beginnings,
in most cases, were trivial. It seems certain that the
whigs began the acts of violence, as between them and
the tories. They spoke later about malignant tories ;
and the tories did manifest a very malignant temper.
It is not strange. Inasmuch as there was no declara-
tion of war, there was no moment after which it could
be said to be treason to aid the enemy. Inasmuch
as there was no Union until March, 1781, and the
State governments were reconstructed one after the
other during 1776 and 1777, it would be difficult to
set a time after which a man was guilty of rebellion,
if he resisted the American military operations. Con-
gress, which had no constitutional authority at all,
passed a resolution, Oct. 6, 1775 : "that it be rec-
ommended to the several provincial assemblies, or
conventions, and councils or committees of safety, to
arrest and secure every person in their respective

1 Prior Documents, 254; Almon, 1776, part iii. 89.
' Moore's Diary, i. 173 ; ii. 190. * Ibid., ii. 72.

S6 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

colonies whose going at large may, in their opinion,
endanger the safety of the colony, or the liberties of
America." The lack of constitutional authority was
of no importance for the political and military work
of Congress, but it may reasonably be taken into ac-
count when their acts affected personal rights and
liberty. March 14, 1776, Congress passed a resolu-
tion for disarming tories, which, as John Adams said,
"left all the powers of government in the hands of
assemblies, conventions, and committees, which com-
posed a scene of much confusion and injustice, the
continuance of which was much dreaded by me, as
tending to injure the morals of the people and de-
stroy their habits of order and attachment to regular
government.*' *

Long before this, however, the work had begun.
Feb. 27, 1775, ^^* Clark was ridden on a rail
at Hartford, and cruelly injured. The doctor who
succoured him was threatened.* In March a writer
in Boston addressed the Provincial Congress of Mas-
sachusetts in a memorial, five pages in length, in
which he gives a list of outrages, with names and
places. Some of them are Ku Klux outrages.* In
May, 1775, the tories of Worcester were disarmed
and forbidden to leave town or to meet together.*
In June two men were tarred and feathered in South
Carolina for " indecent and daring behaviour." * Oc-
tober 6, occurred the case of Hunt and Kearsley at

1 Adams, iii. 34. 2 Moore, i. 26.

* Moore, i. 37. * Ibid., 33.

5 Ibid., 90; Drayton, i. 273.

FEA TURES OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE, 5 ^

Philadelphia, Hunt was a lawyer who had under-
taken the case of a man from whom a piece of linen
had been sequestrated under the association.^ He
was carted through the streets, accompanied by a
drum, and followed by a rabble. Dr. Kearsley had
written some letters which were intercepted. They
were said to misrepresent public persons and public
proceedings. When the Hunt procession reached
his house, he denounced it. Thereupon he was put
in the cart, and Hunt was released in a submissive
frame of mind. He went to Barbadoes, became a
clergyman, and afterward went to England. He was
the father of Leigh Hunt. Dr. Kearsley was imprisoned
at Carlisle, where he died in November, 1777. Gray-
don, who saw Kearsley carted, says : " What were the
feelings of others on this lawless spectacle, I know
not ; but mine, I must confess, revolted at it. I was
shocked at seeing a lately respected citizen so cruelly
vilified, and was imprudent enough to say that, had I
been a magistrate, I would, at every hazard, have in-
terposed my authority in suppression of the outrage." ^
Jan. 3, 1776, Congress passed resolutions against
the people of Queens County, New York, for voting
against sending deputies to the Convention of New
York. They were put out of the protection of the
united colonies. Trade and intercourse with them
was to cease. No one of them was to be allowed to
travel or abide in any part of the colonies without a

1 Amer. Arch., iv. 3, 470.

^ Memoir, 126; Moore, i. 148; Marshall, 39, 143; Amer.
Arch., iv. 3, 470.

58 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

certificate from a convention, or committee of safety
of New York, that he is a friend of the American
cause, and not one of those who voted against send-
ing deputies. Colonel Heard of New Jersey was
ordered to take five or six hundred men and march
to the west side of the county, and Colonel Water-
bury of Connecticut with the same number to the
east side, and disarm all who voted against sending
deputies ; also to arrest the principal men, whose names
were appended. February 8, the county having
elected deputies, the interdict was raised, provided
a majority of the inhabitants would sign the associa-
tion. For long afterward that district was the scene
of retaliatory outrages between the two parties.^ In
1776 there was a real civil war in South Carolina
between whigs and tories.^ The battle of Moore's
Mountain, in North Carolina, was fought between two
armies of the domestic factions.® Sept. 14, 1776,
the Pennsylvania Committee published an order for
punishing all who should speak or write against the
United States in order to obstruct the measures for
securing independence.*

In April, 1781, Marshall mentions in his diary that
he saw at the barracks, in Lancaster, five or six hun-
dred prisoners, and with them one hundred refu-
gees or tories, "whose appearance was the picture

1 Onderdonk*s Revolutionary Incidents of Queens County,
43 et seq, ; Memoirs of the Long Island Historical Society, iL
chaps, ii., iii., iv. See especially page 85.

2 Laurens Correspondence, 28.

* Caruthers, no.

* Marshall, 92.

FEA TURES OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE. 59

of human poverty and want, both in clothes, flesh,
and meagre looks."

Speakmg of the Quakers banished from Northum-
berland May 1 8, 1780, Reed says: "These are really
distressing cases, when suspicion is to stand for proof,
and necessity makes the law. I am fearful that an
entire discharge will have a very bad effect, and yet it
seems a stretch of power to hold them in confinement
when no cause is shown." ^

Nov. 27, 1777, Congress recommended the States
to confiscate and sell the property of tories, and
invest the proceeds in loan office certificates, to be
appropriated as the States see fit. Very large con-
fiscations took place, although in the end a great deal
was restored. One of the most singular things about
all this matter is that so few, if any, leading whigs
made any protest against it. Hamilton wrote in
1777, approving of the rules about tories adopted by
the New York Convention. " Lenity and forbearance
have been tried too long, and to no purpose. . . . But
in dispensing punishment, the utmost care and caution
ought to be used." Power to do it should be trusted
only to wise hands. Tories should either be made
harmless, or won by clemency.* April 29, 1777, he
wrote to Livingston th^t Washington desired that ex-
amples should be made of some of the worst of the
disaffected.' At the peace Franklin was especially
fierce against the tories.* At that time Adams said
that if the States should indemnify the tories "it

1 Reed's Reed, ii. 199. « Works, vii. 486.

' Works, vii. 490. * Dip. Corr. Rev., vi. 491.

6o ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

would seem an implicit concession of all the religion .
and morality of the war." ^

The specimens here given are only a few from those
on record of the outrages on the tories, but they may
suffice.^ Some are too horrible for belief.' A long
list of tory outrages could also be collected.* The
whole subject is too painful, but it seems necessary to
have a few facts before us in order to realize the
• social disorganization which attended the Revolution.
The Americans themselves were in a state of rebel-
lion, and those who adhered to the old government
were, by construction, in rebellion against them.
Graydon says that in the summer of 1777 the coimtry

1 Dip. Corr. Rev., vi. 443.

*^ See Dawson's " Westchester County " for a long narrative
of them. The Proceedings of the Provincial Congresses of New
York and New Jersey, and of the Council of Safety of the latter
State, bear witness to the spirit of the persecution, the nature
of the alleged offences, the character of the evidence, and the
sufferings of innocent men and women. Onderdonk*s Revolu-
tionary Incidents of Queens County, also of Suffolk and Kings
County, and his "Queens County in Olden Times" contain
numerous cases of outrage on both sides, and prove the social
dissolution which existed.

* Saint John de Crevecoeur (i. 322) tells a story of a man who
was hanged to the verge of strangulation on a charge of giving
a night's lodging to a person who had shared in the Wyoming
massacre, but it is permitted to believe that the story is some-
what embellished. See also the story in Madame Riedesel's
Memoirs, 196.

* Caruthers, 1 59 et seq.

6 In Kemble*s Journal (N. Y. Hist. Soc. 1883, p. 62) is a
very ingenious antithetical statement of the attitude of the
Americans toward the English on one side, and the tories on
the other.

FEA TURES OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE. 6 1

was full of majors and colonels, mostiy bar-tenders,
brimful of patriotism, which meant to hate and perse-
cute tories.^ He implies that the mihtiamen stayed
at home, talked grandly, persecuted tories ; and that
such men got all the glory.^ The essence of the
cause for which the whigs were contending, he says,
was freedom ; " and yet all the freedom it granted was,
at the peril of tar and feathers, to think and act like
themselves." He had been in the army.

We turn next to the measures adopted for mak-
ing good the resistance to Great Britain. The weak-
ness of these, and the effect of the mistakes involved
in them on the people, will set before us other social
and political features of the time which enter into our
field of study. We are seeking in this period of con-
vulsion the germs and explanations of the phenomena
of the later period, when American institutions and
the American political s)rstem were taking shape. If
we can get an accurate and comprehensive idea of
these matters, we shall be able to understand with
ease the subsequent developments. We have already
seen that there were powerful influences at work to
educate the American people in anarchism.

1 Memoir, 283. 2 ibid., 306.

62 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

CHAPTER V.

FEATURES OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE, 1765-1780. IV.

Defects of the Measures for coercing England and carrying on war. —
Commercial War. — The second impulse of common sentiment —
Continental Currency.

It does not appear that the Americans, in 1774,
expected an armed collision with Great Britain.
They believed that their non-importation agreement,
in 1765, had been very effective to secure the repeal
of the Stamp Act. They had tried, in 1768, 1769,
and 1770, to unite in other agreements of this kind,
with only very slight success, but they had unabated
confidence in the efficacy of the device. They be-
lieved that a congress to secure a real hearty co-oper-
ation of all the colonies in this measure would force
attention and bring redress. ^

The faith in commercial war is very persistent. It
is by no means dead yet. Commercial war may be
used either as an adjunct of military war, or to sup-
plement military coercion, or, without going to war,
to force concessions in tariffs and prohibitions. In
every case it is what Daniel Webster called it : " Per-
nicious as to ourselves and imbecile as to foreign
nations." The retaliation never works as expected.
All experience shows that the effect of retaliation is

FEA TURES OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE, 63

not to make the other party recede, but to do one of
two things. Either he does not know that retaliation
is intended for a wrong previously done by him, or
he does. In the former case he regards himself as
the victim of a fresh and unprovoked wrong. In the
latter, his pride and stubbornness are aroused not to let
himself be coerced. In either case he does not re-
cede, but answers with a new attack, stronger than his
first one. Hence it is in the inevitable philosophy
of retaliation that it leads on from bad to worse, and
produces destruction and loss at every step.

Tariff wars, embargoes, non- importation laws, and
the whole series of devices of this character prove
over and over again the statement just made. They
are almost utterly ineffective for the purpose in view.
Then, again, it is necessary in them always to hurt
one's self a great deal in order to hurt the other
party a little. All trade goes on for mutual advan-
tage. It is a complete mistake to regard trade as
a favour done by one party to another, or as a posses-
sion or property. A merchant treats his customers
as persons who have done him a favour. This is by
courtesy of intercourse, or because he wants to attract
the customers to himself from a rival. He also re-
gards his customers as a sort of clientage, attached to
himself, so that the good will of the business has the
character of a possession or property. It is from the
extension of these notions to the entire market that
the notion grew up that the trade of nations is a prop-
erty of nations, and that buyers do favours to sellers.

It is evident, however, that the merchant's notions

64 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

just mentioned are personal only. As soon as we
take in the whole market, the relations which are
personal to him disappear. This fallacy is one
against which we must always be on our guard whfen
reasoning from individuals to the society. Some re-
lations accumulate in going up from the individual
to the society; others cancel. When we view the
market, there are no buyers and sellers, but persons
exchanging with each other. Each one is giving and
taking. The advantage is mutual. No one is under
obligation to another. Every obligation is discharged
and finished when an exchange is made. The oper-
ation is also entirely impersonal. Exchanges are
made in immense numbers between people who never
meet, and never know anything about each other.
Even the personal relation, in the individual cases,
when it comes to the surface, rests properly on noth-
ing but mutual interest. If A makes his exchanges
with B rather than with C, it is properly only for the
reason that his interests are better served by B than
by C. If that was not the case, he would be making
presents to B all the time. If then he transfers his
exchanges from B to C, out of anger or favour, he must
sacrifice the advantage which he had with^ and he
will be making presents to C. If he goes without
' what he used to obtain from ^ he lowers his com-
fort, and exposes himself to suffering. If we take the
other side, and consider the case of a man who re-
fiises to sell his products to somebody, out of malice
or hostility, we see that he may expose the latter to
suffering, but he must recede from the industrial or-

FEA TURES OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE, 65

ganization. He has to face the question, what he is
here for, and how he hopes to get his Uving. Perhaps
the grandest case of delusion from the fallacy of com-
mercial war which can be mentioned is the South in
i860. They undertook secession in the faith that
'* cotton is king," and they had come to beheve that
they had a means to coerce the rest of the world, by
refusing to sell cotton. As soon as they imdertook
secession, their direst necessity was to sell cotton.
Their error came down to them in direct descent
from 1774, and Jefferson's embargo.

These are the fallacies which are in any boycott, big
or little. There is a self-contradiction in the device.
We are here to exchange with each other. We are
absolutely dependent on mutual services. It is social
suicide to resolve that we will not render them. For
these reasons the commercial war undertaken by the
colonies in 1774 was futile as to its purpose. It
should, however, be noted that if we count the
Albany meeting of 1755, to concert plans against
Canada, as the first throb of common interest and
united action between a number of the colonies, then
the stamp-act Congress was the second and more
powerful one, and this Congress of 1 7 74 was the third.
It showed by comparison an immense increase in
vitality. FrankUn said, in 1760, that the colonies
were not able to unite against the mother-country.
In proof of it he referred to the meeting of 1755, at
which he said that the only union which did take
place was due to the authority of the crown.^ In the

1 Franklin, iv. 42.
5

66 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

two later congresses the colonies had at least reached
the point of being able to adopt a measure of spon-
taneous union.

It was common interest and common danger, not
sympathy and affection, which drew them together.
I'he latter sentiments were conspicuous by their ab-
sence. It is one of the points which we have to note
here, that every step toward union was forced by
some major necessity which was great enough to
overcome the separatist tendencies which all the sen-
timents and prejudices contributed to strengthen.
The Congress of 1774 sat only a few weeks. Few if
any had any idea that it would stand as the first of
the sessions of a great representative and legislative
body of a great State composed of the thirteen colo-
nies. It was nothing more than a conference to or-
ganize the commercial war. If their petition had been
heeded in England, it would have stood as isolated as
the stamp-act Congress.

The articles of association were a bond of volimtary
agreement. Besides the non-importation and non-
exportation agreement, they included a non-consump-
tion agreement, a renunciation of luxury and amuse-
ment, and an attempt to regulate prices so as to
prevent effects on prices which were obviously to be
apprehended from the other measures.

In all common-sense and right reason, if the colo-
nies had expected to have war with England, they
should, instead of breaking off trade with her, have
removed any and all possible obstacles to trade with
her. That would have been boldly flying in the face

FEA TURES OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE, 67

of all the received notions, but it would obviously be
the only wise course. When the war began, they had
scarcely any powder or lead, few guns, little cloth or
leather, or means of making them, and were in gen-
eral almost destitute of supplies for an army. If
these things were to be got cheaper and better in
England than anywhere else, there was the place to
buy them. Instead of thinking of the commercial
profit which English merchants would gain (which,
according to the notions of the time, filled their
minds), they might better have regarded it as a
sort of spoiling the Egyptians, to get from England
the cheapest and best supplies with which to fight
England.

Instead of refiisiog to sell, they should have sold
all they could ; and if England was the best market,
they should have sold there so as to gain as much as
possible, all of which would be strength for war. The
reason why they did not do this was, that they re-
garded the commercial war as an independent means
of coercion without war, and because the minds of
men were entirely filled then, in regard to commerce,
with the notion that it was a power and a property in
some sense beyond the convenience served by it in
the supply of wants. This commercial war, however,
like very many others, proved only a delusion as a
means of avoiding war ; it only introduced war. In-
stead of coercing the English Government it was taken
as an act of rebellion ; and in February, 1775, an Act
of Parliament was passed to forbid New England to
trade anywhere except to Great Britain, Ireland, and

68 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

the British West Indies, and to exclude the same
colonies from the fisheries of Newfoundland. This
was extended in March to all the colonies except
New York, Georgia, and North Carolina, The first
two had not accepted the association,^ and it was
thought that the third would not.

Thus the response to the American resolve not to
trade with Britain or her dependencies, was a prohi-
bition to trade anywhere else. On the supposition of
peace and continued connection with Great Britain,
which was the standpoint of the association, the
commercial war had issued in a deadlock.

In its internal aspects it was no more fortunate.
The association was not adopted by Congress without
developing very serious dissensions and local jealous-
ies. In South Carolina, the rice exception came near
dividing the State, and may have had a share in the
actual armed division which arose there.^

It never was enforced. The trade went on between
England and America, but through Holland and the
West Indies. The money which Laurens borrowed
of France in 1781, was spent in Holland, to the great
dissatisfaction of the French Government, and, accord-
ing to Lord Sheffield, for English goods.^

The non-consumption agreement in the association
was a different matter. If the colonists really chose
to abstain from certain articles of luxury, at a time of
solemn undertaking, it might be very honourable and
useful to do so, but unfortunately the attempt was
made to enforce this by those who wanted to do it

1 Drayton's Memoirs, i. 168. ^ Observations, 10.

FEA TURKS OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE. 69

against those who did not. Also the restriction of
prices was a matter of inevitable tyranny.

The enforcement of these measures was intrusted
to local committees with consequences which we
shall note.

After the battle of Lexington the scene changed.
The case was then one of armed conflict. Never
was a war undertaken, and never did a people find
themselves at war, if that statement fits the case
better, so illy prepared. Never was a contest carried
on by means so ludicrously proportioned to the en-
terprise. It is possible to speculate as to the prob-
able results, if the Americans had made no military
preparations, and had simply waited for the English
to wear themselves out in a struggle with passive
resistance, or if the Americans had carried on an
energetic war, supported by adequate organizations
of army and finance. They did neither; and the
result was that the enterprise and the apparatus were
constantly in violent, and, if the matter had been less
serious, ridiculous, contrast with each other.

Instead of organizing a conscription, or an ade-
quate militia organization, the recruitment was left to
a volunteer system with extravagant bounties, which
exhausted the pecuniary resources without putting
them at the disposal of the Congress. Instead of
laying taxes, taxes were really reduced, for the Con-
gress got none, and Great Britain had formerly ob-
tained seventy-five or eighty thousand pounds.^ The
real reliance was on paper money. Of this the thir-

^ Adams, ii. 363.

70 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

teen colonies which revolted had all made use. They
were all familiar with it. It was a discovery of theirs,
and the world has never yet understood that dis-
covery at its full value and true significance. They
were themselves far from understanding it. It was
like a genie in the Arabian Nights, which could be
evoked, but how it would behave they were by no
means sure.

The scheme of the continental paper was by no
means bad financially. It was proposed by G. Morris
in the New York Congress, and by that body trans-
mitted to the Continental Congress.^ By the Reso-
lution of July 29, 1775, ^^ch colony was to make its
arrangements for taking in its share of the notes
issued by Congress in its own way. The proportion
of the total issue which it fell to the duty of each
colony to redeem was allotted according to total
population on the best estimate of that which could
be made, and subject to ultimate adjustment. For
instance, out of a million dollars the share of New
York was $80,000. If Congress paid out a million
dollars in notes, which passed into circulation in all
the States, including New York, that State was to lay
taxes to the amount of $80,000, which would be pay-
able in the notes. This would bring $80,000 into
the State treasuiy, where they could be burned. Con-
gress could then issue more, which would follow the
same course. As long as it was kept up, Congress,
which had no power to tax, could use the State power
to tax, so as to reach the people. The notes also

1 Sparks's Morris, i. 38.

FEA TURES OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE, 7 1

would be cancelled so as to keep down their amount.
The device was therefore what they called " anticipa-
tions " at that time ; and it was a very ingenious adap-
tation to the combination of States, of a device which
had been used in the States before.

As the notes bore no interest, the interest paid by
a community which used them for the " advance "
of the year's revenue was very heavy ; but it was con-
cealed, and they never knew it. The device was set
in operation with one mistake; and although there
was no important financial blunder in it, there was
a fatal political blunder, for the paper-money diffi-
culty is always political, not financial. The mistake
was that the time set for the States to take in this
first issue was not within the year, but in four in-
stalments, — on the last day of November, 1 7 79*, 1 780,
1 781, and 1782. The motive of this plainly was to
make it easy, and it was probably expected that the
war would last only a year or two. The real effect
was that there was an immense inflation before the
time set for the first redemption was reached.

The political blunder was that the States imme-
diately saw that they had given to Congress power to
levy taxes. On the scheme . Congress could decide,
in its good pleasure, what amount to issue ; and each
State was held to take care of the quota assigned to
it, whatever that might be. It was useless to hope
that they would do that. The spirit which animated
them was very different from that which would be
required by that arrangement.

The first issue was made on the " pledge of the

72 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

colonies." Later the current phrase became that
" Congress pledged the faith of the continent" That
phrase was used until, considering what it ought to
have meant, and the solemnity with which it ought to
have been used, it was a scandal. They appeared
to be ready to get anything on credit, and to promise
anything by pledging " the faith of the continent."

The amount issued in 1775 was five million dol-
lars, and in 1776 nine million dollars. The current
assumption at the time was that the specie value
of the circulation when the war broke out was
thirty millions. This was too high. P. Webster,
reckoning from the rate of depreciation, put it at
twelve, and later at four. The States were issuing
very largely at the same time, and the computation
is probably impossible. Depreciation was first offi-
cially acknowledged in January, 1777. As it was
alv/ays understated, it probably began earlier.

In the first two years, then. Congress had adminis-
tered this device very cautiously. When the depre-
ciation began, they became more reckless. As the
depreciation went on, they set the opinion of the
country that depreciation was unnecessary, that it
was a result of malice, that it was brought about by
monopolists, speculators, forestallers (persons who
bought up to hold for a rise, although the old sense
of the word was, one who went out to meet goods on
their way to market and bought them before they were
exposed in the market), and engrossers (persons who
bought large amounts, to win a monopoly in the
market) ; fiirthermore, they adopted the opinion that

FEA TURES OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE, 7 3

depreciation could be prevented by police regulations
to offset these devices, by legal-tender laws, and by
fixing tariffs of prices.

This brings us to the point of interest to us now
in connection with our subject. The administration
of the laws against tories, and in support of the asso-
ciation, and of the laws to enforce the circulation
of the continental paper money was intrusted to
committees of safety or inspection.

74 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

CHAPTER VI.

FEATURES OF AMERI.CAN PUBUC LIFE, 1 765-1 780. V.

Tyranny of committees. — Executive committees of Congress. — III
effects on military and financial administration. — Factions in
Congress. — Factions among foreign represoitatives.

Gordon represents the committees of correspond-
ence as having taken their rise in an effort to show
that Hutchinson was wrong when he represented the
whole trouble as resting only with a few busybodies.
The intention was to unite all who were dissatisfied in
a way to make their number and importance evident.^
These committees began to be formed anew in 1773.
They were very useful and effective in sending informa-
tion, and in bringing about sympathy and union. The
committees of correspondence transmitted the news
of the battle of Lexington from Wallingford, Con-
necticut, to Charleston, South Carolina, in seventeen
days, by expresses and relays.^ In view of the lack
of facilities for the transmission of intelligence, and
the great need of transmitting it in order to develop
community of feeling and interest, these committees
were very important.

They seem to have set the example for other com-
mittees which undertook the work of police and admin-

1 History, i. 312. Dawson claims prior invention for New
York; namely, Oct. 18, 1764. (Sons of Liberty, (^ et seq.)

2 Drayton, i. 276.

FEATURES OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE, 7S

istration, either against the old governments or in the
interval between the old and the new. The com-
mittee at Philadelphia caused Hunt to be carted in
August, 1775.^ On the 6th of October, 1775, ^'^y
sent to Chester to arrest a person supposed to be on
his way to Europe with letters. Such letters were
brought back, opened, and being, in the opinion of
the committee, " calculated to inflame the minds of
people in England against the colonies in general,"
three of the writers were arrested and imprisoned.
Dr. Kearsley was one of these. On the 7th they
arrested more persons with letters. Congress ordered
these prisoners turned over to the committee of the
State.^

On the loth of June, 1776, the same committee
arrested a Jew for cursing Congress ; but being some-
what abused, he informed against another who, he
said, had instructed him in those points. The mob
went to the latter's house. He ran away. They
injured his house and property.* In June Congress,
in order to limit mob violence against tories, resolved
that no one should be molested in person or property
unless by an order of Congress, or a convention of
the colony, or a committee of safety.* In July the
Philadelphia committee appointed a sub-committee
of secrecy to examine all inimical and suspected per-
sons.* In that month the committee suspected a
Mrs. Arrall, who was about to leave for New York, of

1 See p. 57.

* Marshall's Diary, 39, 45, 48. ' Ibid., 76.

^ Cong. Joum., ii. 212. ^ Marshall, 81.

76 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

carrying on a correspondence with the enemy. They
arrested her and brought her before the committee.
It appeared that she had only been guilty of some
unguarded language.* On the 4th of September
William Allen declared that he would shed his blood
against independence. This led to an altercation
with John Bayard. A complaint of Allen was sent
to the committee. He belonged to the leading
family in Pennsylvania, which was entirely broken up
and ruined by the war. In the same month that
committee was dissolved.^ In 1777 a person writing
to Laurens from Georgia, complains of the extrava-
gance and lawlessness of the whigs. He says that
the community is ruled by tavern meetings and '* noc-
turnal societies."* In July, 1777, a new society was
formed in Philadelphia to help in compelling every-
body to take the oath of allegiance or leave the State.
Graydon mentions a Quaker who was nearly ruined by
the patriots, who would take a horse or a cow, sell it
for taxes, and never give him the difference.* Special
taxes and exactions were quite generally laid on tories ;
and as the Quakers would not take up arms, and as-
sumed, for the most part, an attitude of neutrality and
indifference, they had a great deal to complam of.

In March, 1775, a county committee in New Jersey
published a man for drinking tea.^ In September,
1775, a man was before the Philadelphia committee
for denying their authority with regard to some tea.

1 Marshall, 86. 2 ibid., 91, 93.

8 Laurens Correspondence, 39. * Memoir, 325.

^ Marshall, 15.

FEA TURES OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE. 77

In the same month the committee fixed the amount
of salt to be sold to each county out of a lot which
had apparently been confiscated.^ Marshall himself,
having moved to Lancaster, w^^ informed by his son
that the price of sugar was rising. He hastened to
buy as much as he could of his neighbours in Lan-
caster before they heard of it. He does not appear
to have noticed that he was forestalling.* In August,
1776, some women at Fishkill, New York, seem to
have thought that they would be their own committee.
They seized some tea which was held at a high price,
and gave the continental tariff price for it.

In 1779 Congress seemed to become affected witii
the recklessness of bankruptcy. The issues were
enormous, and the depreciation went on with great
rapidity. The faster this movement ran its course,
the more extravagant were the attempts to stop it by
force. In May a meeting was held at Philadelphia,
presided over by Mr. Roberdeau, at which he made
a speech. He said : " The way to make our money
good is to reduce the prices of goods and provisions.
The tax that has been laid upon us by monopolists
and forestaUers within these six months past, for it
may justly be called a tax, amounts to more money
than would carry on the war for twelve months to
come." The next day a committee which had been
appointed at that meeting set a tariff of prices.* A
cargo arrived consigned to Robert Morris. The

1 Marshal], 90, 91 ; Amer. Arch., v. 3, 185.

3 Marshall, 120.

• Penn. Packet, May, 1779.

78 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

committee waited on him to see if he would com-
ply with the tariff. He replied that the goods were
for the French army.^ May 31, this committee
published a set of rules, but they declined to estab-
lish, or execute punishments. "After having ascer-
tained facts, they will leave such persons to make
their peace with the public the best way they can,
unless they [the committee] are desired to interfere."
Marshall mentions cases under these regulations in
which goods were stopped while being carried out of
the city to evade the rules ; also cases in which the
price of boxes, casks, etc., was raised, although that
of the goods was not. Flour was also smuggled out
covered with earth. "To such mean shifts are the
disaffected driven, since the committee has been
elected," says Marshall. He mentions a committee-
man who, although elected, had never served, and who
charged more than the tariff. When expostulated
with, he replied that he would sell at his own price or
not at all. "The committee were satisfied that he
was a friend of his coimtry only so far as his interest
led him." ^

Marshall mentions in his diary, in January, 1776, a
case of a hatter who refused paper money. He was
remanded under censure for a week to think it over.
Two similar cases are mentioned the next day. In
December, 1776, Rush wrote to R. H. Lee that when
Howe approached Philadelphia the people refused
continental money. Putnam produced only a tem-
porary remedy by imprisoning them and declaring the

1 Penn. Packet, July 8, 1779. 2 Marshall, 218, 222.

FEA TURES OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE. 79

debt void. Those who had goods refused to sell, and
creditors refused to give up the bonds, or kept out of
the way when continental money was offered. He
proposes that Congress shall recommend the States
to declare the debt forfeited, and fine the creditors
severely for refusing the money. " This will be more
effectual than imprisonment, which, from becoming so
common for tory practices, has now lost its infamy.
... I tremble every time I think of the danger of
the further progress of the refusal of our money." ^
Marshall mentions a case of a mortgage in which
record was made of a tender of continental money
and refusal of the same.* In November, 1776, he
mentions a case where a man was precluded from all
trade and intercourse for refusing the paper.*

In all this struggle the constant cry was that credit
ought to be maintained, and that it was criminal not
to help support credit. Here we have the notion
that credit is some sort of successful humbug. It
is a notion of frequent recurrence. It is believed
that if people will only agree to affirm that some-
thing is true which they know is not true, they can
get just the same effect as if it were true. Credit,
however, is, above all things, the truth. Falsehood
kills it. It has no relationship with swindling or
confidence operations. The effect of all compulsion
is to excite distrust and doubt. It suggests to the
observer that truth is not what the pretence seems
to be. The truth, however, is what he wants, espe-

1 Lee's Lee, ii. 160. 2 Diary, 95.

• Ibid., loi.

8o ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

cially if he really possesses anything which he can
lose. Therefore his faith is repelled, and credit is
destroyed. Credit is belief in the truth.

The committees did not confine their regulation of
things even to the tories, the association, and the
paper money. On the 24th of November, 1775, i^
was proposed to hold a ball in Philadelphia at a
tavern. It was expected that Mrs. Washington and
Mrs. Hancock would be present.. The city com-
mittee voted that there ought to be no ball in those
troublous times. They visited Mrs. Washington, and
asked her not to attend. She thanked them, and said
that she would not. Otherwise it had been threat-
ened that the tavern should be attacked.^

We have, then, ample evidence that these irrespon-
sible committees exercised a great tyranny, and that
they helped to educate people to unconstitutional
methods. P. Webster wrote about them, in 1 790, that
it was an obstinate delirium, in the war time, that the
credit of the continental money could be sustained by
compulsion. "This ruinous principle was continued
in practice for five successive years, and appeared
in all shapes and forms, — that is, in tender acts, in
limitations of prices, in awful and threatening declara-
tions, in penal laws with dreadful and ruinous punish-
ments, and in every other way that could be devised,
and all executed with a relentless severity by the
highest authorities then in being, — namely, by Con-
gress, by Assemblies and Conventions of the State, by
committees of inspection (whose powers in those

^ Marshall, 52.

FEA TURES OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE. 8i

days were nearly sovereign), and even by military
force; and though men of all descriptions stood
trembling before this monster of force, without daring
to lift a hand against it during all this period, yet its
unrestrained energy ever proved ineffectual to its
purposes, but in every instance increased the evil it
was designed to remedy, and destroyed the benefits
it was intended to promote. . . . Many thousand
families of full and easy fortune were ruined by these
&tal measures, and lie in ruins to this day without
the least benefit to the country, or to the great and
noble cause in which we were then engaged." He
writes this for the benefit of the financiers of future
generations.!

If we turn now to another set of facts, we may
see what were the needs of the country which forced
themselves on the attention of leading public men.

It is easy to see, even in the superficial facts of the
case, that what the United States needed was an ad-
equate organization. This is the fact which is devel-
oped by the whole history of the Revolution. There
was an exceedingly low social vitality. The organs
of the state did not respond quickly to stimuli.
Those who carry back to that period modem ideas
cannot understand that the social movement could
have been so sluggish. If we realize how sluggish it
was, we can hardly understand how it was possible
to accomplish anything. There was no state of the
United States, properly speaking. The Union had no
proper organs ; it started on a burst of spontaneous

* Essays, 128.
6

82 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

enthusiasm. As long as that lasted, the authority of
Congress was respected and its orders were obeyed,
out of good will, although it had no authority at all
by any constitution. It is, indeed, very remarkable
what high respect Congress enjoyed for the first three
years. Before the Articles of Confederation were
formed, which gave Congress constitutional authority,
the burst of enthusiasm had long worn itself out.

Congress made the great mistake at the beginning
of not sitting in open session. Hutchinson says that
opening the debates of the Massachusetts Assembly
had a great effect to educate the people to "sedi-
tion." ^ The Journal of Congress was published, but
in a way to have no popular interest and win no
attention.^ If the debates had been open, it would
have been a powerful means of educating the people,
keeping them informed, and making them ready to re-
spond to the public needs. There was no newspaper
press suited to build up and sustain a true public opin-
ion, or maintain an interchange of ideas and informa-
tion between the different States. The newspapers
were strictly local. They depended on private cor-
respondence for news, and on volunteer essayists
for discussion. The lack of a true newspaper press
explains the popularity of Paine's " Common Sense."
It did just what a good modem newspaper would

1 History, iii. i66.

2 A gentleman wrote to Robert Morris, in 1777, from North
Carolina, that he wished the journals of Congress might be
published every day and scattered through the continent.
(Letters to Robert Morris, 428.)

FEA TURES O^ AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE, ^l

do, — crystallize ideas. Hamilton, in 1783, tried
to have the debates of Congress made public,^ and
he was seconded by Wilson ; * but they were not
able to bring it about. Hamilton wanted publicity
on financial topics, if on nothing else. As long as
Congress was printing paper money and giving it out,
it retained its power. Instead of drawing money
from the people by taxes, we find Congress giving
out money to the States during 1777 and 1778. It
had no real money. It was using the printing-
machine. Until that resource was exhausted by de-
preciation, it had the appearance and effect as if
Congress had had a magazine at their disposal.
Franklin wrote, in 1 7 79 : " This effect of paper
currency is not understood on this side the water,
and indeed the whole is a mystery even to the poli-
ticians, how we have been able to continue a tirar
four years without money, and how we could pay with
paper that had no previously fixed fund appropriated
specifically to redeem it. This currency, as we man-
age it, is a wonderful machine ; it performs its office
when we issue it ; it pays and clothes troops and pro-
vides victuals and ammunition; and when we are
obliged to issue a quantity excessive, it pays itself
off by depreciation."* He ought to have added,
" and leaves us utterly helpless when the process is
ended."

Such was the effect on Congress. Their prestige
declined very rapidly in and after 1 779. They could

^ Madison Papers, i. 341. ^ Joum. Cong., viii. 184.

• Franklin, viii. 328.

84 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

not then adopt any real adequate measures, because
they could not win confidence again. Before the
Articles of Confederation were adopted, they were
only fit to be superseded.

In their system of administration Congress began
with a town-meeting plan of executive committees.
They were under the dominion of a number of per-
nicious prepossessions, some of which had been incul-
cated by the notions of the last ten years. They
were afraid of a one-man power. They held personal,
provincial, and sectional ideas.^ They were afraid of
an army. They were afraid of the States. A feature
of the times was an over-fondness for popularity.
There was always a lion in the way. They did not
seize upon their chances with intelligent energy.
They seem to have gone upon the doctrine that noth-
ing should be done against which any objection could
be raised, and that the duty of a good citizen was,
not to throw himself with all his might into the great
business on hand, but to raise objections. John
Adams says that they held undigested notions of
liberty.^ They would not do anything which had
ever been done in England in connection with which
any abuses had ever been perpetrated. Hence it
took six years, and the personal authority of Robert
Morris, to introduce contracts.* If it had not been
for the personal weight and reputation in finance of
Robert Morris, it is doubtful if. heads of departments
could have been put in the place of the boards. All

1 Adams, ii. 448. 2 ibid,, iii. 83.

^ Morris's Morris, i. 382.

FEA TURES OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE, 85

the mistakes were stubbornly defended, until bitter
experience broke them down.

The methods of Congress were extremely unbusi-
nesslike, wasteful, and inefficient. Time was wasted
in appropriating sums of a few dollars each for petty
expenditures. Money was wasted because there was
no proper system of accounting. The paper-money
system did not admit of it. So much paper was
printed, and it was given to some persons to be ex-
pended for goods to be exported, to others for sup-
plies, etc., etc. ; " he to be accountable," as the
phrase ran. Until he accounted, which it seems
that in very many cases he never did, there was no
responsibility possible in the books.^ Supplies were
squandered. The quartermaster's department and
commissariat were conducted on a most extravagant
scale.^ Unwise projects were imdertaken. At first it

1 In 1783 Robert Morris reported : " Congress have before
them fuU evidence that many persons, late officers in the civil
department, refuse to account at all." (Dip. Corr. Rev., xii.
430.) A few months later he wrote : An investigation of some
of the accounts of the old commercial and secret committee
"has not only discovered some balances due to the United
States, but has reported other matters which show in a strange
point of light the necessity of examining and settling those
accounts." (Ibid., 442.)

2 "There is here a series of officers very expensive and
totally superfluous. Every brigade has its commissary of sub-
sistence, its quartermaster, its wagon -master, its commissary
of forage ; and each of these, again, has his deputies. Each
general, again, is entitled to a special commissary of subsistence
and three commissaries of forage. All these men rank as
officers, and really have nothing to do. My blacksmith is a
captain ! *' (Kalb, 140 ; at Valley Forge.)

86 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

was proposed to conquer Canada, Nova Scotia, and
Florida, to build a navy, and to help Spain against
Portugal. Small results were achieved.

Feb. 12, 1778, a committee of investigation re-
ported from Valley Forge to Congress. The report
was kept secret, but a copy of it was captured with H.
Laurens's papers in 1 780. It was first published by
Stedman. It is there stated that the property of the
continent is dispersed over the whole country : wagons
are abandoned; intrenching tools left at random;
tents and tent-cloths left in a farmer's bam, and lost
sight of; no straw is provided in the huts ; there is
great sickness and mortality; inoculation cannot be
carried on under these circumstances ; there are con-
stant new cases of small-pox, great lack of wagons.
If the enemy should make an attack, they would cap-
ture the cannon for want of horses to move it. The
troops are in danger of perishing with famine, or dis-
persing in search of food. The commissaries have
bought pork in New Jersey which cannot be brought
for want of wagons. The commissary and quarter-
master department seem to be in a state of collapse.^

At about the same time Kalb wrote : " The war-
fund pays a good many bills that could not well be
made public. I have no doubt that the contractors
make fifty per cent on every contract, not to speak of
the other defraudations, the mere enumeration of
which would be endless." ^ The same officer, being a
frugal German, thus comments on the general hab-
its of waste in 1779 : "The consumption of meat is

* Reed's Reed, i. 360. 2 Kalb, 143.

FEA TURES OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE, 8 7

almost incredible. It is impossible to habituate ,the
people of this country to anything like order or regu-
larity of living, and equally impossible for one who has
grown up m the midst of order, discipline, and punc-
tuality, to accustom himself to the indolence of these
people.*'^ In 1780 the French Minister, Luzerne,
wrote : " It is difficult to form a just conception
of the depredations which have been committed in
the management of war supplies and foraging, cloth-
ing, hospitals, tents, quarters, and transportation.
About nine thousand men, employed in this service,
received enormous salaries and devoured the subsist-
ence of the army, while it was tormented with hunger
and the extremes of want." *

Tradition has fastened upon the sufferings at Valley
Forge ; but the sufferings of the next two or three win-
ters were not less, and the distress and nakedness of
the Southern army up to the end of the war were
shocking in every point of view." In 1780 the French
were obliged to help the American army with pro-
visions. The point of this for our present purpose,
however, lies in the fact that there was plenty all
about, and the people were not paying any war-taxes
at all. There was no general distress or poverty. Ex-
cept at the seat of war for the time being, the war
did not . press on the people in any way. The whole
trouble lay in the lack of organization by which to

1 Kalb, 165. 2 Durand, 218.

' Kalb, 149, 183 ; Johnson's Greene, ii. ; Reed's Reed, ii. 201 ;
Bancroft, X. 415.
* Durand, 217.

88 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

bring the resources which existed in ample abund^ce
into application to the necessities.^

The impression which all this makes is that of in-
experience. It was the work of men who had not
learned by experience that method and accuracy pay,
and that slip-shod arrangements waste money, time,
and strength. The impression we get is that any
strictness of system was irksome to people in those
days, and irritated them. It was not imtil January,
1779, that Congress ordered the foreign agents to
obtain information and report on the methods em-
ployed in the government ofl&ces in Europe.* The
negligence and waste repelled support. It made the
States less willing to give, or gave them a welcome ex-
cuse for not giving, and annoyed the French allies.

In 1779 Congress was split up by factions. .There
were two leading ones, which corresponded with the
parties for and against Washington in the cabal. The
party for Washington was considered by the French
their party; the other they thought English. The
latter was led by the two Adamses and the two Lees.
The other Virginians were reckoned in the Washing-
ton party. The division was therefore also sec-
tional. New England was not pleased that a Virginian
was put at the head of the army. John Adams
was not attached to England, as the French thought.
He did not want the United States to fall into
dependence on France, and he told the truth when
he told King George that he was attached to no

1 See the Life of Robert Morris on this point
* Sec. Journ., ii. 130.

FEA TURES OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE. 89

country but his own.* A more correct and important
distinction between the parties was that one was con-
tinental, the other state-rights. In 1778 the French
Minister, Gerard, reported to Vergennes about these
parties, that the Southerners wanted rotation, the
Northerners wanted Congress to act on the election
for Congress. Most members owe their seats to zeal
for the cause, not to their ability for business, and
they do not put a man in a position for which he has
special ability. This is worst of all for the finances.
Congress has made itself the universal merchant and
supply-agent, with mischievous consequences. The
birth of the RepubHc is not rendered glorious by dis-
interestedness. All the agents have won exorbitant
advantages. The spirit of gain is widely active. Cu-
pidity is one of the distinctive characteristics of the
Americans,. especially of the North. "A lack of or-
der and organization in details has existed since the
beginning of the Revolution, and has more than once
put the welfare of the Republic in jeopardy. If the
English had shown themselves in America as bold and
energetic as we have seen them elsewhere, they would
have met with little resistance. The more one ob-
serves this contrast close at hand, the more one is
forced to say that the finger of God can be seen in
this fact." In this despatch, referring no doubt to
Morris, he says : " A merchant presided over the Com-
mittee of Commerce. They transferred him to the
head of that of Foreign Afiairs, and he has quitted this
last position because he has been suspected of using

1 Adams, viii. 258.

90 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

the secret information which he received for mer-
cantile profit." *

In 1776 John Adams wrote to his wife : "There is
too much corruption even in this infant age of our
republic. Virtue is not in fashion. Vice is not in-
famous. . . . The spirit of venality you mention is
the most dreadfiil and alarming enemy America has
to oppose. It is as rapacious and insatiable as the
grave. . . . This predominant avarice will ruin Amer-
ica, if she is ever ruined. ... I am ashamed of the
age I live in." * Jay wrote to Washington in April,
1779: "There is as much intrigue in this State
House as in the Vatican, but as little secrecy as in
a boarding-school." *

If we turn our attention to the diplomacy of the
period, we note similar weakness, and loss from simi-
lar causes. There were half-a-dozen agents at Paris,
who were certainly not suffering anything for the
cause. They were living on 2,500 pounds sterling
per annum each, in order to maintain the dignity of
their country. Only one of them was useful. Frank-
lin was the man on whom the cause hung from 1779
to 1782. He had the confidence of the French Gov-
ernment, and could get subsidies and loans. Jay and
Adams were useful men in the later years. The
looseness of the business methods was such that mil-
lions were spent, and no one had Miy vouchers or
records to show for what, and no records of goods
received in America or otherwise accounted for by

i Doniol, iii. 317. ^ Letters to his Wife, i. 166, 171.

8 Johnston's Jay, i. 210.

FEA TURES OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE, 91

which to control the record of the expenditures.
Goods which were bought and paid for with money
which had been begged were lying in warehouses in
France or at Martinique, when the American army
was suffering for the want of them. This proved a
lack of energy in administration.

Franklin was old and indolent. He always pro-
tested that he was not a business man, and he was
not capable of keeping accounts. The agents were
also quarrelling with each other in a way which was a
scandal to all the civilized world, for they did not
keep it a secret. As the diaries, letters, etc., have
come before the public during the last century, they
have revealed a scene of jealousy, backbiting, and
undermining, on the part of those men, which is
shameful. Details of all this may here be passed
over. The point for us is that here also lack of dis-
cipline and energy and high-bred self-control was
inflicting deep wounds on the American cause and on
American reputation.

Deane was by no means a wise man and not free
from blame, but in the main he was a victim of the
slack methods of business of which everybody was
guilty ; and the entire scandal connected with him,
which was interwoven with many of the most im-
portant political movements of the period, may be
charged to those methods.

92 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

CHAPTER VII.

FEATURES OF AMERICAN PUBUC UFE, 1765-1780. VI.

Lack of discipline in the Army. — Social disintegration. — Sectional
dislike. — Youthfulness a national trait.

If such were the general characteristics of the
people, the place where they would manifest them-
selves most distinctly must be the army. John Adams,
on his way to the conference with Howe, in 1776, was
shocked at the number of stragglers from the conti-
nental army, and at the lack of discipline in it. He
came back earnest for a reform.* As President of the
Board of War, he set about it. He describes the army
as " a scene of undiscipline, insubordination, and con-
fusion." * He secured the adoption of the English
articles of war without change, but the consequence
of that seems to have been that they were not en-
forced. Washington's general orders show that he
was constantly approving of the decisions of court-
martials on cases of discipline, against his will, being
dissatisfied with them as inadequate to discipline.

There was constant difficulty during the war with
the naval commanders.* The discipline on the ships

1 Letters to his Wife, i. 213, 255. ^ Adams, iii. 86.

* Adams, iii. 200.

FEA TURES OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE, 93

seems also to have been very poor. The captain of
the frigate on which Adams went to Europe let his
officers and men go ashore, and was obliged to go
after them before he could get them aboard ship
again.* The story of Paul Jones is one long series of
woes on this head. An American frigate seems to have
been a scene of mutiny and quarrelling. The story of
Gillon and the South Carolina frigate, although it was
never officially investigated, is one of criminal un-
discipline, when we consider what suffering was in-
flicted on the army by the neglect to discharge duty
according to strict principles. Adams came home
on a French frigate, and speaks with admiration and
surprise of the good feeling and the smoothness with
which things went on.^

Kalb says that an officer would leave his post at the
beginning of a battle, with or without an explanation
to his superior, and when he pleased would return,
draw pay and rations, and no questions were asked.*
Graydon mentions a Pennsylvania colonel who went
home on leave and never came back.* It is almost
impossible to form an idea how many effective troops
were at any time under arms, because the evidence
is overwhelming that the paper returns bear only a
remote relation to that fact. Washington wrote to
Reed, January, 1776, that the total number of his
army, on paper, was 10,500, but that a large number
of these were returned " not joined,** whom he never
expected to see. It does not appear that there was

^ Adams, iii. 95. ' Ibid., 224.

* Kalb, 129. ^ Memoir, iSi.

94 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

any method of discipline for this.* Lee and Gates
are notorious instances of ofl&cers who attempted to
cany on separate operations against the orders of
Washington.

This undiscipline often went to the extent of civil*
crime. Reed wrote to Washington, in 1781, that he
had sent a sum of money to camp, by an ofl&cer, to
be paid in bounties to the soldiers. The latter com-
plained that they had never received it. The officer
admitted that he had spent it, but a court-martial
failed, on account of the unwillingness of the officers
to serve on it.' In September, 1776, Washington
complained of plundering by his own troops, on pre-
tence that the goods belonged to tories. He men-
tions a case of an officer who led in this business,
taking even a pier-glass and woman's dress, and who,
when ordered by his superior to desist, refused. It
was only after Washington forced a reconsideration
of the finding of a court-martial that this officer was
cashiered.* Having given orders, in 1 777, that horses
belonging to tories should be taken, he found that,
under cover of it, general plundering went on, and he
was obliged to rescind the order.* The case of Amy
Darden's horse, which was stolen by an officer, be-
came famous. It occupied Congress far down into
this century as a " claim." *

To the citizen there was little difference between
plunder and impressment. Impressment was the last

1 Reed's Reed, i. 143. ^ Reed's Reed, ii. 30a

8 Washington, iv. 119. * Bland Papers, i. 71.

* Johnson's Greene, ii. 327.

FEA TURES OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE, 9S

resource, when the lack of organization and efficient
administration had produced their ultimate results.
The effects of it were ruinous to the cause. It was,
of course, anarchy in administration, and made the
people hostile to the cause. It was exercised first
against tories, and fell in with the general abuse of
that class; but then also against whigs, or anybody
who had what was wanted. In 1777 Congress passed
some very angry resolutions against woollen manu-
facturers who would not deliver goods until they got
their pay, " thereby adding extortion to the crime of
injuring the public credit." They ordered the clothier
to seize the goods.^ This was a good way to make
cloth scarce afterward. In 1 780 it is noted that the
farmers of Pennsylvania would be willing to submit to
England, being alienated by impressments.* In 1 780
Reed writes that the number of wagons has amazingly
diminished. In one county where there were for-
merly 1,620 there are now but 370. The reason is
that wagons have been impressed without payment.^
Marshall inveighs against the impressment of horses
in harvest-time. He mentions a horse-race, and says
that those are the horses which should have been
taken.* In 1781 there was more difficulty to get
wagons in Pennsylvania.*

The abuse of the tories drove many of them to
become outlaws, and the special exactions levied on
them were at least made an excuse by a number of

1 Journ. Cong., iii. 466. * Reed's Reed, ii. 284.

* Reed's Reed, ii. 215. * Diary, 255.

* Penn. Arch., ix. 42a

96 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

freebooters, who affected to rob tax-collectors or to
execute reprisals. One of the most celebrated of
these was Captam Fitz, in Chester County, Penn-
sylvania.^ Others were Fanning and McGirth in
North CaroHna.* In 1779 there was a band of tory
freebooters in Monmouth County, New Jersey.* In
1 781 the Governor of New Jersey offered a reward for
Moody, who with a gang had twice robbed the mail.
Moody offered a reward for the Governor, delivered
to the provost in New York.* These cases show the
disintegration of society at the time. The methods
of the outlaws were often a queer echo of the methods
of the committees.

The foreign observers were most astonished, in the
American army, by the neglect of pickets and scouts,
and the general lack of means of intelligence. Lack of
hard money was one great cause of this, because intelli-
gence could be got only for money which would pass
in both camps. It is evident, however, that a deeper
cause lay in the same habits and disposition whidi we
have noted. The battle of Long Island * and the forts
in the Highlands were lost for lack of proper pickets.
Wayne did not admit that he was surprised at the
Paoli massacre, and he did have pickets set ; but in
that case the incident must be attributed to the bad
method of encamping, of which more in a moment.
Kalb often expresses his wonder at the neglect under

1 Futhey and Cope, 548 ; Penn. Arch., ix. 596.

2 Caruthers, 139 et seq. * Moore's Diary, ii. 125,
* Moore's Diary, ii. 466.

^ Long Island Hist. Soc. Mem., iii. 173 et seq.

FEATURES OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE, 97

this head. " They have no idea of a system of pickets
and outposts." ^ When pursuing the English through
New Jersey, in 1778, Hamilton wrote to Washington
showing that they could do nothing for lack of ade-
quate information.^ Anburey says that the English did
not have good information. Their neglect to use their
opportunities would seem to prove it true. D'Estaing
complained that the Americans never had good infor-
mation. That which Washington gave him was always
either old or incorrect. The French messengers trav-
elled at night, which the American messengers would
not do.* De Choin told D'Estaing : " Marches are not
made here army fashion, but like hordes of Tartars.
They encamp almost without precaution, in such a way
that they might be cut off or captured by parties such
as the enemy would send out." * Speaking of Wash-
ington's army in New York, in the summer of 1776,
Graydon says that the numbers were exaggerated;
"and the irregularity, want of discipline, bad arms,
and defective equipment in all respects of this multi-
tudinous asseml^y gave no favourable impression of its
prowess." •

It is a remarkable fact that the foreigners at that
time often expressed astonishment at the slowness of
the colonists.' Kalb blames Washington for slow-
ness.* He says of himself that he had to do all his

1 Kalb, 139, 141, 218. 3 Works, vii. 548.

' Anburey, ii. 240. ^ Doniol, iii. 461.

• Doniol, iii. 342. • Graydon, 147.

^ Anburey, ii. 70 ; Doniol, iii. 382.
> Kalb, 125.

98 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

own writing because his aids were too lazy.^ This
trait seems to be connected with the general easy-
going temper. It raises an interesting question as to
when and how the Americans took on the character
of highly strained nervous energy, which has marked
them in later times. Traces of it are hardly to be
found until after the second war. It has always been
presented side by side with an ability to spend time
in absolutely vacuous idleness which no other people
shows in the same degree.

T he wa r and the army acted as great educators on
the people in the way of rubbing them together, cor-
recting provincialism on all sides, and gradually mod-
erating sectional dislike. This last, at the beginning
of the contest, was intense, and as it was an obstacle to
union it deserves attention. In 1 760 Franklin argued
that the colonies could never be united against Eng-
land, because they all loved the mother-country much
more than they loved each other.^ Graydon*s Memoir
contains extreme expressions of contempt for New
England men. " I have in vain endeavoured to ac-
count for the very few gentlemen and men of the
world that at this time appeared in arms from this
country [New England], which might be considered
as the cradle of the Revolution. There were some,
indeed, in the higher ranks, and here and there a
young man of decent breeding in the capacity of an
aide-de-camp or brigade-major, but anything above
the condition of a clown in the regiments we came in
contact with was truly a rarity. Was it that the cause

1 Kalb, 173. 2 Franklin, iv. 42.

FEA TURES OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE. 99

was only popular among the yeomanry? Was it that
men of fortune and condition there, as in other parts
of the continent, though evidently most interested in a
contest whose object was to rescue American property
from the grasp of British avidity, were willing to de-
volve the fighting business on the poorer and humbler
classes?"^ This sectional feeling had very great
political effect. Perhaps the effects of it can be
traced down to the civil war. We have already
noted that the first parties which arose in Congress
were drawn partly on this line. The New England
officers met with unfair treatment.. There was a
fear of the " levelling " principles of New England.*
One subject of dispute was as to the value of militia.
John Adams favoured a militia system with short en-
listments.* He got some support in New England,
but the opinion in general was strongly contemptuous
toward militia. Greene said that he had more of
them than he wanted.* Washington complained con-
stantly of the system of short enlistments and militia
reinforcements. The Frenchmen made fun of the
militia.* Lauzun says that they ran away at the first
fire.^ Lafayette told the French commander, speak-
ing from his knowledge of the American troops, that
if an energetic attack was to be made, he should desire
to see the French troops lead.® On the other hand,
the militia defeated and captured Burgoyne. It is

1 Graydon, 157. * Adams, iii. 67.

* Adams, ii. 350. ^ Ibid., iii. 48.

^ Reed's Reed, ii. 344. * Doniol, iii. 342.

'^ Lauzun, 203. ^ Doniol, iii. 341.

lOO ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

trae that they greatly outnumbered him, but the Eng-
lishman Anburey shows through his whole narrative
great respect for the American troops ; Riedesel like-
wise. At the investigation of Burgoyne*s campaign,
in England, Lord Balcarres, who had been an ofl&cer
in the expedition, was asked why the Americans did
not defend their intrenchments. He replied, be-
cause " they always marched out of them and attacked
us." " They fought at all times with courage and obsti-
nacy." The attack on Stony Point, being an assault
of a fortified place, raised the confidence and reputa-
tion of the troops.* This was the sort of work which
they were thought incapable of. It remained an open
question whether, if an adequate system could have
been devised, suited to the character of the people
and their habits of life, for organizing the militia, and
bringing them into the field in overpowering numbers
upon special occasion, they might not have proved
very successful. As it was, the American army was a
caricature of a European army in the style of Fred-
erick the Great.

Unfortunately the medical department of the army
presented the same deplorable features which we have
been obliged to notice elsewhere. In 1776 the sur-
geons were bickering with each other.^ A letter is
printed from Dr. Shippen, in 1777, complaining of
neglect and fraud in the medical department of the
army, with allegations of corruption against the direc-
tor of it, although he do6s not want to be called upon

1 Kalb, 174. 2 Washington, iv. 117.

FEA TURES OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE, i O I

to make the -aile^ions good.^ In April, 1778,
Washington transmitteci to Congress a letter from Dr.
Rush, making charges agakist-Dr. Shippen.^ When he
took office, in 1781, Robert' Morris Jold a committee
of Congress that " the expenses- of 1;he. -medical depart-
ment are said to have exceeded th6se of the- like kind
in any other country." * / * -

The facts which have now been presented su^ce to
show that the great faults in the public affairs ox the.
United States at this time were indolence, negligence,
lack of administrative energy and capacity, dislike of
any methodical business-like system, and carelessness
as to money responsibility and credit. It was alleged
against the Americans that they were selfish. In their
relations with France they seemed so. They seemed
to lack pride and self-respect where money could be
got. It is, however, questionable whether this was
correctly ascribed to selfishness. It was rather a lack
of generosity and magnanimity ; and upon close study
it seems that these faults are not correctly described,
in the case of the Americans, as due to selfishness.
The ungenerosity was of the kind manifested by chil-
dren. It arose from the same cause as the ungener-
osity of children ; namely, lack of sense of the great
law of equivalence. A man with experience of the
world finds that there are few things to be got for
nothing. His mind inevitably reverts to the cost or
equivalent. He reduces his expectations to the meas-
ure of the equivalents he can give. Children, on the

1 Lee's Lee, ii. 171. * Journ. Cong., iv. 133.

• Dip. Corr. Rev., xi. 356.

102 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

contrary, expect all things, or are reaidy to conceive
of the possibility that things ijiay come for nothing.
This seems to have been *4ii^ American trait, and it
fell in with all the youti;iful«circumstances of their case.
It provokes a.smdfe to see with what sublime confi-
dence th\sy plantield this, or asked for that, without
proposing any equivalent. Laurens argued to Ver-
gehneisthat it was for the interest of France to help the
> Americans through the war, at a time when, as he and
. Vergennes both very Well knew, the Americans were
subjecting themselves to no extraordinary self-denial
to carry themselves through it.^ The Frenchman
remonstrated against the demands, but made no im-
polite reference to the comparison which was possible ;
but, in effect, Laurens's argument put France in the
position of a dupe. The agent, or go-between, of
the Spanish Minister at last replied to Jay : " But you
offer no consideration y ^
X With these facts of the situation before us we see
that the first statesman of the period would be the
man who most clearly perceived the faults and needs
"oT the country in civil administration, union, army,
and finance. We can also easily anticipate that the
attempt to introduce needed reforms, and to raise
the tone of civil and political affairs, would bring the
author into sharp collision with all popular prejudices,
habits, tastes, and notions. Also that, if the attempt
to introduce energy into the administration, discipline
into the army, cohesion into the union, punctuality
into the finances, was pushed faster and farther than the

1 Dip. Corn Rev., ix. 236. « ibid., vii. 354.

FEA TURES OF AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE, 103

temper of the people for the time being would permit,
the reforms would suffer shipwreck from the revolt of
the masses against the operation to which they were
subjected. In these observations we have the clew to
the career of Alexander Hamilton, y

104 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

CHAPTER VIII.

Hamilton's military service; earliest financial
schemes; service in congress; assistance in

THE administration AND REFORM OF THE FI-
NANCES.

We left him an officer of artillery at the beginning
of 1 776. Near the end of that year he was appointed
on Washington's staff, and became his confidential sec-
retary. The General had been for six months in great
need of an officer of that kind.^ He found one who
was just what he needed. Hamilton was industrious.
He wrote a clear style, although prolix. He was ca-
pable of taking the General's orders, and composing a
letter to publish them, which would rank as of very
high literary merit among the writings of those days.
He was also a studious man, and was studying topics
of finance and administration.^ The number of im-
portant and confidential missions on which he was
employed is proof of his competency in a variety of
directions.

Of these, one of the most important, and one which
brought distinctly before him the evils of poor disci-
pline, was the errand on which he was sent to Albany,
in November, 1777, to obtain reinforcements from the

1 Reed's Reed, i. 127. 2 Republic, i. 122.

HIS MILITARY SERVICE. 105

Northern army in the hope of driving the British out of
Philadelphia. This boy of twenty had to execute a
diplomatic mission of great delicacy with the man who
at the moment was the great hero, having all the credit
for capturing Burgoyne. He only partially succeeded,
but the letters which he wrote are very extraordinary
productions from a man of that age. He ^so on the
same errand had a similar difficulty to get troops
from Putnam, who was also a great man by age and
reputation.

On account of his ability to speak and write French,
he was very useful in the conferences with the French
generals after the French army arrived. His most
intimate friend at this period was John Laurens, who
was perhaps the most interesting hero of the war. In
1778 Hamilton was Laurens's second in a duel with
Gen. Charles Lee ; Laurens being the challenger on
account of words defamatory of Washington which
Lee was reported to have used. Lee was very
slightly wounded. In 1780 Hamilton was in attend-
ance on Washington when Arnold's treason was dis-
covered. He has left the best account of that affair
which we possess. He was much interested in Andr^,
and desired that his request to be shot, not hanged,
might be granted.*

Although Hamilton was probably aware of his use-
fulness on the staff, for he never lacked self-apprecia-
tion, he was eager for military renown. His friend
Laurens had the same passion. Very probably they
strengthened each other in it. Hamilton's first appli^

» Works, vil 562. a Works, viii. 18.

lo6 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

cation to Washington, in 1 780, for an appointment in
the line was refused, because there was no post to
which he could be assigned without calling out some
of the jealousies of which there had been so many.

In February, 1781, he quarrelled with Washington
in a way which manifested bumptiousness on his
part. The letter which he wrote to his fither-in-law,
Schuyler, about the affair is also disagreeable reading.
He repelled some advances made by Washington to
a reconciliation, not with churlishness, it is true, but
with a rather affected dignity. However they parted
friends, and the incident produced no estrangement.
It does not appear, however, that there ever was a
warm personal attachment between them, as there
was between Washington and Laurens, or Washington
and Lafayette. In his letter to Schuyler, Hamilton
says that Washington is not delicate or good-tem-
pered. He had long been determined, when the
breach came, not to stay; and he says, with some
sense, that Washington's self-love would never forgive
him, if he (Washington) should make concessions.
"For three years past I have felt no friendship for
him, and have professed none. The truth is our dis-
positions are the opposite of each other, and the
pride of my temper would not permit me to profess
what I did not feel. Indeed, when advances of this
kind have been made to me on his part, they were
received in a manner which' showed at least that
I had no desire to court them, and that I desired to
stand rather on a footing of military confidence than
of private attachment. You are too good a judge of

HIS EARLIEST FINANCIAL SCHEMES. 107

human nature not to be sensible how this conduct in
me must have operated on a man to whom all the
world is offering incense. With this key you will
readily unlock the present mystery."

In that summer he found the opportunity for active
service which he had desired, and joined the expedi-
tion to Virginia, which ended in the surrender of
Comwallis. At the final assault on the works, he
distinguished himself among the first.^ He had been
married on the 14th of December, 1780, to Eliza-
beth Schuyler; and the two letters which he wrote
to his wife, to inform her that he was going to York-
town, show a gentle side of his character which ap-
pears but little in those letters of his which have
been preserved.

The first attempt made by Hamilton to act on
public affairs was a letter which he wrote on a plan
for a bank,* Mr. Lodge dates this letter 1 780, and
says that it was written to Robert Morris, who had
just undertaken the management of the finances.
Morris was not elected Superintendent of Finance
until 1 781. The letter is addressed to a member of
Congress, who is not mentioned by name. Morris
was not in Congress after 1778. J. C. Hamilton says
that the letter was written " soon afler the army en-
tered winter quarters at Morristown."* The finan-
cial circumstances mentioned in the letter carry it to
the month of November, 1779.

1 Lee's Southern War, ii. 341. He had also won military
distinction in the Brandywine campaign. (Ibid., i. 19.)
« Works, iu. 61. » Republic, i. 570.

Io8 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

The importance attaching to the question of the
date is that, if it goes back to 1779, it was earlier
than the first beginning of the bank at Philadelphia.
We must infer either that the letter was written to
some other member of Congress than Morris, or that
Hamilton supposed Morris to be in Congress when
he was not. The letter was sent without signature,
but he gave an address, by which a reply might reach
him. In his letter to Morris of April, 1781, he does
not refer back to this letter. It is not therefore prob-
able that a reply was made to it by Morris, if it was
sent to him, as the whole tenor of it would certainly
lead one to suppose.

He says that the document of 1779 ^s "the prod-
uct of some reading on the subject of commerce and
finance." It is not easy to see what he could have
read.

There is a tradition that he read Adam Smith, and
made a careful commentary upon "The Wealth of
Nations," in 1783, which is now lost.^ Nothing in
his writings goes to prove that he ever read Adam
Smith. By this it is not intended to say that a man
who had read Smith with care must accept his con-
clusions. Many men have read him without agreeing
with him at all ; but it is not often that an intelli-
gent man, eager to learn all he can, has, after reading
Smith, been able to repeat the notions of the mercan-
tilists, as Hamilton did, without at least feeling bound
to take some note of the objections which Smith
brought against them. Neither does Hamilton show

1 Republic, ii. 514.

HIS EARLIEST FINANCIAL SCHEMES, 109

that he had read Hume's economic writings with care
and profit, although Hume was the chief authority
then in the hands of people who busied themselves
with economic topics.* Much less does he seem to
have read any of the French economists who were
just at the time attracting attention. Dupont's " Table
Economique " was published in 1779, and was in the
hands of Franklin at once,^ but of course could
not have been used by Hamilton; but even later
he does not appear to have read the contempo-
raneous French writers.' The only mention of
any writers of that school in his works is in his re-
view of Jefferson* s first message, in which he refers
contemptuously to Turgot and Condorcet.* The
writers whose influence seems to be traceable in his
opinions are Montesquieu, Melon, and Law, espe-
cially the two latter.* He refers to Law in this letter
of 1779, and in the one to Duane, six months later.

1 He quotes Hume, in "The Farmer Refuted" (1775), on
points of political philosophy (Works, i. 70^ 78) ; also in the
"Federalist" (Works, ix. 551). In the " Continentalist "
(1781) he tries to interpret Hume's doctrine of the balance of
trade (Works, i. 256), on which see page 180. In the conven-
tion of 1787 he quotes Hume as to the utility of corruption
in the English system (Works, iii. 390). In his paper on a
national bank (1781), he quotes Hume as to the amount of
the circulation in Great Britain (Works, iii. 86).

* Franklin, viii. 405.

* In his letter to Morris, 1781, he once uses the word
" numerary," which would seem to indicate French reading.
(Works, iii. 103.)

* Works, vii. 245.

* He does not mention Melon.

no ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

In the present letter he credits Law with "more
penetration than integrity ; " and the reason for cred-
iting him with penetration is that he "saw that no
plan could succeed which did not unite the interest
and credit of rich individuals with those of the state,
and upon this he framed the idea of his project,
which, so far, agreed in principle with the Bank of
England." ^

This notion of holding up the government by giv-
ing rich men an interest in it is one which has often
been charged upon Hamilton, but it plays no impor-
tant part in any of his later discussions, and might
rather be regarded as one of the notions in this docu-
ment which he outgrew. For the scheme in the
letter of 1779 is crude in the extreme. It is not a
plan for a bank, but for a trading company, in which
the government and a company of rich men were
to be jointly interested. It reminds one of the
attempts in the early part of the Revolutionary War,
through the Committee on Commerce, to carry on
trade as a means of raising money for Congress.
He proposes a foreign loan of ten million dollars,
the need of a foreign loan being at the time one
of his firm convictions. Then he proposes to take
subscriptions for two hundred millions of continen-
tal paper at twenty for one, which would be ten
millions more. The government puts in the former
and the private subscribers the latter. The notes
were to bear interest at two per cent, payable in
three months. He admits that he is not clear as

1 Locke is barely mentioned in Works, i. 59.

HIS EARLIEST FINANCIAL SCHEMES. 1 1 1

to whether the principal of the notes should be
payable at the three months* limit or not. The
scheme presents no workable device. It is related to
those which every other man had in his pocket in
1875. Unfortunately, it is mutilated at the part
where he undertakes to set forth how it would work.
At last its success must have depended on the success
of the commercial enterprises, and on the success of
the government in getting in loans and taxes. In
this letter he urges that there should be a head of
the treasury, and says that the person he is addressing
is the one for the place.

In August, 1 780, a convention was held at Boston,
' one of the series of price conventions, which recom-
mended a closer union. Hamilton caught up the
proposition, and wrote to the president of the conven-
tion, in Washington's name, approving and expressing
a hope that something would come of the proposition.
In October he wrote a letter which is dated at Boston,^
in which he said : " We must have a government with
more power." In February, 1781, he said that the
complete ratification of the confederation would be a
good thing, unless it made the people think that
Congress had power enough, and so prevented it
from getting more.* In the summer of that year he
published the " Continentalist " • p^ers, describing the

^. Works, viil 29. 2 ibj^.^ 34.

• The word ** continental " and its derivatives sound strangely
to modem ears. They were devised to get a word for " the
whole" which should have no political color, like Union,
Confederation, etc. Therefore continental stands in the sense

112 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

forlorn state of things, blaming State particularism for
it, and urging a revision of the confederation so as to
make a more perfect union. He was led on to dis-
cuss the whole political and economic situation.

His next contribution to public questions was a
letter to Duane, Sept. 3, 1780.^ This letter is the
document which shows that he had seized the main
faults and difficulties in the state of the country,
in 1780, and traced them to their true causes. He
urged that the Union was defective, although the
Articles of Confederation were not yet adopted.
The States have too much power, especially over
the army. There is a want of energy in the admin-
istration. He wants a single head to each depart-
ment, and wants a convention called to meet on
the first of the next November to settle a "con-
federation."^ He would not wait for the States to
be called on for amendments. [When we note the
impracticability of that means of amendment, as it
was afterward developed by experiment, we must
regard this as a very clear-sighted judgment.] He
wanted the new Constitution to give Congress com-
plete control of the army, navy, commerce, diplomacy,
etc. He enumerates in detail all the important func-

which we now give to national. A man who held continental
views was the precursor of a federalist, and the ** continen-
talist " meant what ten years later was called a federalist, —
that is, before that word received its strict party application ;
when it meant one who wanted a confederation of the States.

^ Works, i. 203.

2 They used this word currently in the sense of constitution
for a confederation.

HIS EARLIEST FINANCIAL SCHEMES. 113

tions of a modem state. These are all to be in the
federal state. Then he takes up ways and means.
He proposes four, — a foreign loan, which, he says,
ought to have been obtained long ago, taxes in kind,
a bank founded on public and private credit, and
taxes in money. He sketches his plan of a bank
briefly.

April 30, 1 781, he wrote a letter to Morris contain-
ing a scheme of a real bank.^ It is a very elaborate
paper. He starts out with one of the old notions
that the revenue of a country is in some relation to
its circulation, confounding money and wealth. By
comparing the cases of England, France, and America,
he reaches the conclusion that the United States are
capable of paying, on this method of calculation, a
round six millions annually, for all purposes, State and
federal ; but the needs of State and federal expendi-
tures are ten millions. This would leave four millions
to be borrowed abroad. So much cannot be expected
from France. He urges a bank to supply the defi-
ciency. " We have not a sufficient medium." Here
again, then, he has gone back from the revenue,
which is wealth, to the medium of exchange, which
is money. His bank is to have three million pounds,
lawful money (six shillings to the dollar), capital.
His reason for putting it in "pounds" is that the
dollar money is tainted with a prejudice because the
continental was in dollars. The capital was to be
paid in land securities, specie, plate, bills of ex-
change, or European securities. About one third

1 Works, iii. 86.
8

114 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

was to be in specie. The United States and the
States might subscribe for not over half of the capi-
tal. Notes were to be issued in pounds, shillings, and
pence, payable at sight ; those under twenty pounds
bearing no interest, those larger four per cent. The
bank was to buy land from which he thought that
great gains might be made, as tories would put much
land on the market and sell it cheaply. Depositors
were to pay a fee for safe keeping. The bank was to
lend Congress twelve hundred thousand pounds at
eight per cent, for the interest of which taxes were to
be laid and the income strictly appropriated. Other
revenues were also to be raised sufficient to pay the
bank two per cent on all the paper outstanding, at
forty for one, for which provision the bank was to
guarantee the paper and retire it in thirty years.
There were to be three auxiliary banks in Massachu-
setts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Finally, he wanted
Congress to obtain amendments to the Articles of
Confederation, giving it power to levy import duties,
a land tax, and a poll tax, and to collect the same by
its own agents.

His bank was a paper-money machine, and the
scheme of it contained financial fallacies which, as
we shall see, he never conquered ; but the boldness
of the scheme, and the skill with which it was aimed
at the difficulties of the situation, are most remark-
able. It is the statesmanship of it which is grand,
not the finance. He had seized the chief faults in
the existing institutions of government. He says that
what he wants is " system and vigour.'*

HIS SERVICE IN CONGRESS. iiS

Morris replied that he was afraid to "interweave
a security with the capital of this [his] bank," lest
the notes should seem to be circulated on that credit,
and the bank would fall, if there should be a run on
it. " I not only think, but on all proper occasions
shall say, that the public are indebted to you" for
this plan.*

In 1782 Hamilton wrote to Laurens that to make
independence a blessing " we must secure our Union
on solid foundations, — a herculean task, and to effect
which mountains of prejudice must be levelled." ^

In May, 1782, Robert Morris asked Hamilton to
take the position of receiver of continental taxes in
the State of New York. Hamilton at first declined,
but afterward consented. Morris had great difficulty
to find any person for these offices who could be
relied upon to put any energy and spirit into his
work. It must have been a great encouragement to
him to have somebody take hold of it as Hamilton
did. He visited the Legislature in order to try to
persuade them to conform to Morris's plans, and
also made strenuous efforts to obtain information
and report upon the tax system of New York, and
the state of the relations between that State and the
federal government. He held this position until he
took his seat in Congress in November.*

He sat in Congress in the year 1782-83, and there
advocated the same ideas ; although, as he wrote to
Jay in July, 1783, "The road to popularity in each

* Dip. Corr. Rev., xi. 366. ^ Works, viii. 72.

» Ibid., 52-89.

I-l6 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

State is to inspire jealousies of Congress, though
nothing can be more apparent than that they have
no power.* As early as 1776 the question had arisen
in his mind whether Congress ought not to collect its
own taxes by its own agents.' This is one of the
cardinal features of an adequate federal system, and
he urged it strenuously in Congress.* On the 30th
of June, 1783, he offered resolutions setting forth in
considerable detail, under twelve points, the defects
of the confederation, and proposed a resolution for
a convention to meet and revise the Articles.*

In many respects this was the most important
session of the Continental Congress. The finances
reached a climax; peace was concluded, and the
army disbanded. But these affairs did not run their
course without producing a very serious crisis. As
the time approached for disbanding the army, their
complaints became louder and louder. There was
a clear disposition to get rid of them as quickly as
possible without paying them. Many wanted to
" elude the just pretensions of the army." * What
was an army one day would have been turned into
the same number of tramps the next day, with no
means of obtaining a dinner. There was a project,
which was construed by many into a conspiracy, on
the part of the two Morrises and Hamilton, to unite
the interests of the army, as creditors, with those
of the other creditors, in order to bring pressure

1 Works, viii. 147. 2 Republic, i. 122.

8 Madison Papers, i. 288, 291, 380.

* Works, i. 288. 5 Ibid., viii. 109.

HIS SERVICE IN CONGRESS. II7

upon Congress to adopt a plan of revenue. Wash-
ington warned Hamilton that this was suspected, and
that it woi4d defeat their own object, if the army
should think its rights delayed in order to make
capital for a project of congressional policy.^ Ham-
ilton, in his reply, did not admit the objectionable
colour which was given to their enterprise. He said
that there were in Congress two classes of men, — one
attached to State, the other to continental politics.
"The advocates for continental funds have blended
the interests of the army with other creditors, from a
conviction that no funds for partial purposes will go
through those States to whose citizens the United
States are largely indebted." ^

In the mean time Morris had become very tired of
his position. In January, 1783, he wrote to Frank-
lin : " Imagine the situation of a man who is to direct
the finances of a country almost without revenue (for
such you will perceive this to be), surrounded by
creditors whose distresses, while they increase their
clamour, render it more difficult to appease them ; an
army ready to disband or mutiny, a government whose

1 Washington's Writings, viii. 418.

2 Letters to Washington, iv. 17. It must be noticed that the
words " fund " and "funding " at this time were going through
a change of meaning. The old meaning, which is here em-
ployed, was that of a single branch of the revenue. Thus the
income from a land tax would be a fund, and to fund was to
enact a certain tax and appropriate the income from it to the
payment of a specific obligation of the government. The word
" fund " is of frequent use, however, in the same period, for
resources or means on hand available for certain purposes.

Il8 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

sole authority consists in the power of framing recom-
mendations. Surely it is not necessary to add any
colouring to such a piece ; and yet truth would justify
more than fancy could paint." ^ Two days later he
wrote to Franklin again : " If one bill should be pro-
tested, I could no longer serve the United States." ^^
In fact, he had already overdrawn on the banker
Grand at Paris, but it had not as yet involved a pro-
test. The fact was that he had been treated with
the same spirit which has already been described as
pervading the treatment of public affairs. It was
the custom to select a man for some arduous posi-
tion, and then, instead of giving him support and
furnishing the necessary means, to take an attitude of
criticism toward him. Morris resigned on the 24th
of January, 1783. "To increase our debts while the
prospect of paying them diminishes does not consist
with my ideas of integrity. I must therefore quit
a situation which becomes utterly insupportable." *
When he informed Washington of this, in February,
he said that the Congress wished to do justice, but
" they will not adopt the necessary measures, because
they are afraid of offending their States." January
30 a committee reported on the finances, stating
that, of the eight millions of dollars demanded for
the service of 1782, only ;8l420,ooo had been re-
ceived. The loans obtained in Europe had produced
for that year only ;8l833,ooo, so that Congress had
had only a little over a million and a half of dollars

1 Dip. Corr. Rev., xii. 310. 2 ibid., 313.

^ Ibid., 326.

HIS SERVICE IN CONGRESS, 119

available for that year. The estimated expenditure
was 1^5,713,000, without counting interest on former
debts^ which would alone exceed all the money at
their disposal.^

As soon as Morris's resignation was known he was
greatly blamed. He was said to have ruined the
public credit, and to have reflected on Congress.
This responsibility was evidently the fate of any ex-
ecutive officer under the system. He wrote to the
President of Congress: "On the day on which I
was publicly charged with ruining your credit, those
despatches arrived from Europe which tell you it was
already at an end." " It can no longer be a doubt
to Congress that our public credit is gone." ^ At the
same time he wrote to Greene : " You and every good
man will, I hope, acquit me for leaving a post in
which I am totally unsupported, and where I must
be daily a witness to scenes of poignant anguish and
deep injustice, without the possibility of administering
either relief or palliation." ' Hamilton sympathized
completely with Morris, both of them being anxious
for the public credit and for the Union. Hamilton
wrote to Washington that Morris had resigned be-
cause he found himself in a position where he must
either resign or sacrifice his own credit and character,
together with that of the public. He blames Morris,
however, for the publication of his resignation.*

1 Journ. Cong., viii. 84.

^ Dip. Corr. Rev., xii. 342.

8 Ibid., 339.

* I-«tters to Washington, iv. 20.

I20 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

In April it became necessary to make some arrange-
ment with the army. The sum necessary to give
them three months* pay was 1^75 0,000. A committee
of Congress was appointed to confer with Morris as
to what could be done. He said that the only way
was "to risk a large paper anticipation." This,- in
the language of the times, meant, issue certificates of
indebtedness and run the risk of their being paid by
some future taxes. If this step was taken, he would
have to become personally liable, on leaving the office,
for about half a million, depending on his successor
to save him from ruin, and risk his personal credit.^
In the conference with the committee he agreed to
remain in office until this enterprise was carried
through, provided that he could rely upon Congress
for such support as would make it sure of success.
Whereupon Congress resolved that they would give
him this support. Hamilton was chairman of the
committee and the leader in this arrangement.^
Thereupon new notes were printed and distributed
to the army. In May Morris wrote to Franklin : " If
these notes are not satisfied when they become due,
the little credit which remains to this country must
fall, and the little authority dependent on it must fall
too." He urged him to obtain another loan from
France.^ Congress failed of its pledge in this matter,
or perhaps it should rather be said, the event proved
that they had given a pledge beyond their power.

1 Dip. Corr. Rev., xii. 346.

2 Journ. Cong., viii. 184.

8 Dip. Corr. Rev., xii. 372.

HIS SERVICE IN CONGRESS I2I

Morris was forced to draw upon the bankers in Hol-
land to sustain the notes which he had issued, and
his bills went to protest at the end of the year.^

Even this arrangement did not run its course in
such a way as to avoid trouble with the army. Some
soldiers at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, who had never
been in the field, marched to Philadelphia on the
15 th of June and besieged Congress in their hall.
They also directed demands to the authorities of the
State. The mutiny lasted about ten days, and it was
necessary to send for troops from Washington's army
to suppress it. This incident led to a somewhat
acrimonious correspondence between the authorities
of the State and a committee of the Congress, of
which Hamilton was the leader. The Council of
Pennsylvania would not call out the militia until
some outrage had been committed. This was the
old method of dealing with riots, and was in the
highest degree vexatious to Hamilton. Congress,
apparently under his leadership, manifested indigna-
tion that the State had not given them adequate
protection; although Hamilton did not accept the
responsibility for the removal of Congress to Prince-
ton, which immediately took place, as an expression
of this indignation.*

Of course the thing upon which everything turned
was taxation. Hamilton gave the most earnest effort
to the projects before Congress for securing federal

^ See further on this the Life of Robert Morris.
* Journ. Cong., viii. 206, 207, 260 ; Dip. Corr. U. S., i. 9 ;
Works, viii. 145.

122 ALEXANDER HAMILTON',

taxes. A project had been pending for some time to
get the consent of the States to a five per cent import
duty, to be levied for the use of the Confederation.
Oct. lo, 1782, Rhode Island and Georgia were called
on for a definitive answer whether they would agree to
the five per cent duty, upon which they had not yet
acted. On the 6th of December the Superintendent
of Finance was ordered to represent to the States the
necessity of their paying twelve hundred thousand
dollars to meet the interest on the debt, also two mil-
lions for current expenses ; and it was voted that a
deputation be sent to Rhode Island to ask that State
to consent to the five per cent duty. On the 12th
a letter from the Speaker of the lower House of As-
sembly of Rhode Island was read, stating their reasons
for refusing : first, that the tax would bear hardest on
the most commercial States ; second, that it would
introduce officers into the States unknown and unac-
countable to the State ; third, that it would give Con-
gress power to collect money from the commerce of
the State indefinitely as to time and quantity, and for
the expenditure of which Congress would not be ac-
countable to the State .^

Here we have a complete echo of the objections
that were made to the English taxes before the war.
The anarchical elements which had existed in the pre-
Revolutionary agitation began to make themselves felt
against the Union as soon as the dangers of the war
were past. They also intertwined immediately with
the questions of taxation and finance. The disposi-

1 Journ. Cong., viiL 25.

REPLY TO RHODE ISLAND OBJECTIONS, 123

tion presents itself at once to shirk out of all possible
obligations to the army and the public creditors, and
to break down the Confederation, because that was
the organ through which the claims of these classes
could be presented. The authority of the Confedera-
tion was also denounced as taking the place, in the
way of tyranny, of what the English government had
been before the war.

In the answer to this memorial, which was drafted
by Hamilton,^ he took issue in the most positive man-
ner possible with all the doctrines of the document.
He claims for Congress " an absQlui ;e discretion in
determining the quantum of revenue requisite for the
national expenditure. When this is done, nothing re-
mains for the States separately but the mode of rais-
ing. No State can dispute the obligation to pay the
sum demanded without a breach of the confederation ;
and when the money comes into the treasury the ap-
propriation is the exclusive province of the federal
government." By taking issue so directly and openly,
however, he enlightened a great many persons as to
what the issue was who were repelled from his side as
soon as they understood it. For instance, Jones of
Virginia ^ says : " Many now say the reasoning of the
Pamphlet of Congress determined them against the
measure [the impost], disapproving the sentiment con-
veyed in the letter to Rhode Island." We shall see
hereafter many other illustrations of this same fault in
Hamilton's methods.

Immediately after this report was made, the mem-

1 Journ. Cong., viii. 153. ^ Letters, 118.

124 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

bers from Rhode Island found themselves subject to
discipline in Congress on account of a letter from one
of them which was published, containing a statement
that Congress had plenty of money at its disposal ob-
tained by loans in Europe, and that the tax was not
needed.^ In February Hamilton said in a speech that
it was useless to answer the arguments of Rhode Isl-
and, because those given were not the real ones which
influenced her ; that the real motive was a desire to
tax Connecticut.

In the stress of the negotiations with the army in
April, the project of revenue was adopted by nine
States, Rhode Island alone voting no, and New York
divided, because Hamilton voted no.^ On the 26th
of April, 1 783, an address to the people of the States
was issued, drafted by a committee of which Hamilton
was one. They estimate the debts at forty-two mil-
lion dollars, of which the foreign debt was seven
million eight hundred thousand, and the interest on
the whole ;?2,4i5,956. They expect that the imposts
will bring in not quite a million. In the revenue
scheme which had just been adopted, there was added
to the five per cent import duty certain specific duties.
The other million and a half for the interest, the States
were to raise in such way as they deemed best.^

Hamilton and Morris were extremely discontented
with this plan, and the latter considered it as falling
short of the promise which Congress had made to
him. Out of two millions and a half necessary for

1 Staples, 412 ^/j^'^. 2 Jcurn. Cong., viii. 139.

8 Ibid., 145.

HIS ASSISTANCE TO THE GOVERNMENT 125

interest, barely one million was provided for, and a
million and a half still depended upon the voluntary
action of the States. Hamilton wrote to Clinton that
he voted against this plan because it had little better
chance of being accepted by the States than a better
one, and if adopted, it would fail of execution.^ In
September Massachusetts refused to grant the impost,
although she admitted the necessity of sustaining the
public credit, and stated her reasons, which amounted
really to a remonstrance with Congress, because the
latter had agreed to the half pay and to large salaries.
This was a new development, and seemed to promise
that the States would take the opportunity of granting
taxes to review the action of Congress.

Hamilton also proposed at this session a complete
plan for a military establishment in time of peace, in-
cluding a navy, fortifications, and a military academy.^
His idea was that war was a contingency always to be
borne in mind, and that the United States should not,
when the next war occurred, have its military affairs
in such a condition as that they had been in during
the last war.

He refused a re-election to Congress, and went
back to New York to practise law.

1 Works, viii. 117. ^ Ibid, vi. 71.

126 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

CHAPTER IX.

THE TREATY OF PEACE; TORIES; THE CONSTITUTIONAL
CONVENTION OF 1 78 7; THE STRUGGLE FOR THE
RATIFICAnON OF THE CONSTITUTION; .HAMILTON
CHARGED WITH MONARCHISM.

It was, however, impossible for him to abstain from
public activity. In 1784 he published letters with
the signature "Phocion," in regard to the treaty of
peace, and against the attainder* and persecution of
tories. For ten years England and the United States
charged each other with breaches of the treaty. The
treaty was undoubtedly, as Hamilton declared, favour-
able to the United States beyond what anybody could
have hoped.^ The United States was extremely well
served in that negotiation. The French were aston-
ished at the English concessions, especially in regard
to the western boundary, the fisheries, and the Mis-
sissippi.^ Franklin, however, was justified in the

1 England " has ceded to us a large tract of country to which
we had even no plausible claim.'* (Works, iii. 457.)

2 Vergennes to Gerard, Dec. 4, 1782, says that the con-
cessions of the English as to boundaries, fishery, and loy-
alists exceed what he would have believed possible. " What
is the motive which can have brought about a yielding disposi-
tion, which might be interpreted as a species of surrender ? "
(Circourt, iii. 50.)

THE TREATY OF PEACE. 12 7

remark which he made, that every treaty of peace
causes clamour and discontent. The Americans were
unwilling to execute the stipulations by which they
conceded that there should be no hindrance to the
collection of the British debts, and that the tories
should meet with a degree of toleration.^

In 1787 Hamilton was a member of the New York
Legislature, where he endeavoured to obtain the repeal
of all laws against the treaty with England. This was
in accordance with a recommendation of Congress,
that a law general in its terms should be passed which
would make the treaty a part of the law of each State.
He also tried to have the federal revenue system
adopted by the State. His argument upon this point ^
was a patient exposition of the facts which made this
action important. New York, however, was willing

1 Article fifth provided that Congress should earnestly rec-
ommend to the legislatures of the several States to provide for
the restitution of confiscated estates to real British subjects,
and of all property to other persons within the English lines
who had not borne arms against the United States ; and that any
other person should have liberty to go into the States and stay
twelve months in his efforts to recover property; and that
they should also recommend to the States a revision of all laws
in a spirit of conciliation ; and that property should be restored
upon a payment to the new possessor of any price which he
had actually paid.

Article sixth provided also that there should be no more
confiscations or prosecutions for the part taken in the war, and
that no person should suffer in person or property for the
same ; that persons in confinement on such charges at the time
the peace was made should be set free, and that prosecutions
should be discontinued. (Dip. Corr. Rev., x 113.)

2 Works, ii. 16.

128 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

to pay the money, but not to grant the power to the
United States. " Power may destroy our liberties." ^

In the matter of the tories, Hamilton came forward
with chivalrous courage to their defence. In the case
of Rutgers vs, Waddington, he tested the law of New
York by which a whig who had left the city, during the
British occupation could collect rent of a person who
had occupied his property during his absence, although
it might be under a military order from the English.
This was an extremely unpopular step, especially as
he succeeded in setting aside the law in the Mayor's
court. He afterward said, however, that neither he
nor the other lawyers in New York ever pleaded the
treaty, and that they could not get a ruling from the
Supreme Court on that point.^ Rutgers vs, Wadding-
ton was settled by a compromise."

1 Works, ii. 2t1'

2 The most celebrated case under the confiscation system
of this period was that of Astor vs. Carver. The estate of
Roger Morris and his wife was confiscated. Mrs. Morris's
estate was a part of the Phillipse property, in which she had
only a life interest by a marriage settlement. It was in Putnam
County, New York. John Jacob Astor bought the right of
Mrs. Morris's heirs in 1819, and commenced suit of ejectment.
The State being bound by warrant to defend the title, Astor
offered to take $300,000 for his claim. In 1829, he having won
his suit, the State agreed to pay him $450,000 for the claim,
provided that the Supreme Court of the United States should
sustain it on appeal, which they did. (Peters, iv. t.) Sabine
says that Mrs. Morris, Mrs. Robinson, and Mrs. Inglis were
the only ladies attainted for treason. (Sabine, ii. 104.)

^ Works, iv. 335, 408. In the biography of Hamilton in the
suppressed history of John Adams's administration it is said:
'*The American tory, against whom he had fought, he now

THE REGULATION OF COMMERCE. 129

The time was now approaching when Hamilton
was to see pubUc opinion advance toward the position
which he had long occupied in regard to the Union.
The immediate connection in which it came about
was the matter of regulating commerce. It was largely
an effect of the geography of the coast. It was im-
possible for New York to enforce any regulation in
which New Jersey did not agree, because they both
abutted on New York Harbor; but if New Jersey
made any regulations, in order to conform to New
York upon the one side, it was found that the same
regulation would produce difficulty with Pennsylvania
on the other side, at Philadelphia. Virginia and
Maryland experienced the same difficulty with regard
to the borders of the Chesapeake and the great Vir-
ginia rivers, and Virginia and North Carolina on
account of the sounds of North Carolina ; while the
Chesapeake came near enough to Pennsylvania to
bring the northern and southern systems into collision
with each other.

After various minor negotiations, a convention of
commissioners from Virginia, Delaware, Pennsylvania,
New Jersey, and New York met at Annapolis in 1786.
Hamilton was a member of this convention, and wrote
the address, which it adopted, and which was sent by
Dickinson, the chairman, to Congress on the 14th of

began to defend, and in every suit where a loyalist was con-
cerned, Mr. Hamilton was the loyal pleader. It is a certain
fact that a great majority of the loyalists in the State of New
York owe the restoration of their property solely to the exer-
tions of this able orator." (Cheetham's Narrative, 55. )

130 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

September. The purport of it was that the federal
government was inefficient, and that further provi-
sions should be devised to render it adequate to the
exigencies of the Union. They proposed that a con-
vention should be called to revise the Articles of
Confederation.^ This led to the convention of May,
1787.

Hamilton's share in this convention was by no
means proportioned to the interest which he had
taken in the government up to this time. As soon as
the convention met, it was found, very naturally, that
there were different groups of persons in it, who had
in their minds different ideas of what the proposed
Union should be, especially as regarded the functions
and the amount of power which should be given to it
compared with what should* be reserved to the States.
We have seen that Hamilton entertained ideas which
would have transferred all the most essential functions
of civil life to the Union. He was therefore on the
extreme of that wing, and could unite very few fol-
lowers. He was on the Committee on Rules of the
Convention, and contributed to the debate, having, as
it appeared, important influence on special points,
but by no means leading in determining the result.
His two colleagues were strong an ti- federalists, and
threw the vote of the State against him. -Unfortu-
nately this left him in the position of an irreconcilable
on the extreme federal side, the tradition of which
position followed him and hurt him all his life. It is

1 Journ. Cong., xii. 12. In Madison Papers, ii., Introductory
to Debates of 1787, is a history of previous steps toward union.

CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION OF 1787. 131

difficult to see why a man should have bten exposed
to any more contumely if he was an extreme federal-
ist, but gave the result his hearty support, than if he
was an extreme anti- federalist, and gave the result a
grudging support; but such was the fact. His two
anti-federal colleagues, being extremists on the other
wing, refused to sign the Constitution. They have
never suffered any odium for this. It is true that
they were comparatively obscure men. In a speech
to the convention in June, Hamilton urged the econ-
omy of doing away with the State governments. He
expressed fear that republican government was im-
practicable over a great extent of territory, but never-
theless he seemed to wish to reduce the States to some
such position as the counties now occupy in the State.
He expressed great admiiation for the English Con-
stitution, quoted Neckar that it " unites public strength
with individual security," and quoted Hume that the
corruption by the crown in England was an essential
part of the weight which maintained the equilibrium
of the Constitution. He also told them that liberty
would make inequality. He was free from the terror
of the big States, which was so strong among them.^

He wanted a senate during good behaviour, and an
executive on the same tenure ; the latter to be elected
through two sets of electors, and the former through
one. The executive was to have a veto on all acts
about to be passed. The government of the Union
was to appoint the Governors of the States, and they

^ Madison Papers, ii 885, 886, 905, 907, 938, 966. Cf Works
ii. 270; viii. 607.

132 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

were to have a veto on State legislation in order to
keep it consistent with federal legislation. The militia
were to be entirely under the control of the Federal
Government. He expressed great admiration for the
House of Lords.i In the notes for his speech,^ he
says that his scheme was presented " not as a thing
attainable by us,. but as a model which we ought to
approach as near as possible." If government is in
the hands of the many,, they will tyrannize over the
few. It ought to be in the hands of both, and they
should be separated. Gentlemen say we need to be
rescued from the democracy, but what is the means
proposed ? A democratic assembly is to be checked
by a democratic senate, and both these by a demo-
cratic chief magistrate. The end will not be answered ;
the means will not be equal to the object. "It is im-
possible to secure the Union by any modification of
federal government. A league, offensive and defen-
sive, is full of certain evils and greater dangers." He
would balance advantages. He implies that his idea
was consolidation. The States and the Union should
each have a well-defined sphere, and they would not
interfere.^ In a letter to Timothy Pickering in 1803

1 Works, i. 371. See Curtis on the Constitution, 371 and
381, for a very careful analysis of Hamilton's plan and very
judicious discussion of his opinions.

2 Works, i. 357.

* When John Quincy Adams first read the draft of Hamil-
ton's plan, in 1837. he wrote (Diary, ix. 345): "The plan was
theoretically better than that which was adopted, but energetic
and approaching the British Constitution far closer, and such
as the public opinions of that day never would have tolerated.

CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION OF 1787, 133

he said that the propositions thrown out in debate
were understood to be only by way of suggestions for
discussion. His final judgment was in favour of an
executive for three years, and he modified his plan to
that effect.^

It seems plain that Hamilton's hearers did not un-
derstand'himT" They seem to havd listened with
astonishment to a man who contradicted some of the
current commonplaces, and professed opinions which
were, -in their terms, political heresies of the worst
kind, f As nearly all of them did their thinking in the
current phrases, they could not understand Hamilton's
criticisms on those phrases, and his analyses of political
notions which broke up the combinations of the ac-
cepted philosophy. It is not easy to seize the force
of criticisms on democracy and republicanism so as to
reproduce them fairly, but it is easy to say of a man
that he "wants a king," or that he "does not trust
the people," or that he is an " aristocrat." When
therefore those who had heard Hamilton came to re-
port what he had said, the reports took the latter
form. He would have been wiser to be silent than
to allow himself the idle pleasure of uttering opinions
which could not even be understood.

After this speech he left the convention, and

Still less would it be endured by the democratic spirit of the
present age, — far more democratic than that. . . . If Hamilton
were now living, he would not dare, in an assembly of Ameri-
cans, even with closed doors, to avow the opinions of this
speech, or to present such a plan even as a speculation."
1 Works, viii. 607.

134 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

was absent from June 29 to August 13. In July
Washington wrote to him/ despairing of the conven-
tion : " The men who oppose a strong and energetic
government are, in my opinion, narrow-minded poli-
ticians, or are under the influence of local views."
The criticisms of Yates of New York and Martin of
Maryland on the work of the convention manifest the
persistency of the old whig ideas of the early revolu-
tion, and show, by the hostility of those ideas to the
Union, how inconsistent they were with any civil insti-
tutions which would be capable of satisfying civil
needs. The state of the case and the thing required
are ignored, and the attention is all thrown on vague
doctrines of political philosophy.

Upon his return to Philadelphia Hamilton gave
earnest support to the adoption of the Constitution
which had been prepared. After it had been pub-
lished, the next and still more difficult task was to
bring about its ratification by the States. We have
already seen what very strong interests existed, which
were perfectly conscious that they were threatened by
this proposed civil organization, and which immedi-
ately drew together to resist it. There was also another
which has not yet been mentioned. All the leaders
of the second order in the different States felt that if
a federal system was established, such as the Constitu-
tion proposed, it was very doubtful whether they would
ever attain to its great offices. While therefore they
occupied positions of importance in the States, if there
was no federal system, they need not feel that there

^ Washington, ix. 26a

STRUGGLE FOR THE RATIFICATION. 13S

was anybody above them ; but if there was a federal
system, their State offices would lose in comparative
importance. They were like the man who said that
he was willing there should be a peerage, if he was
sure that he would be one of the dukes ; but as he
was sure that he would not, he would not consent to
have any peerage. All the old alarm about liberty
was now revived, and all the elements of anarchy and
repudiation which had been growing so strong for
twenty years were arrayed in hostility. Jay wrote to
Jefferson, Oct. 2 7, 1 786, referring to Shays's Rebellion :
"A reluctance to taxes, an impatience of govern-
ment, a rage for property, and Kttle regard to the
means of acquiring it, together with a desire of equal-
ity in all things, seem to actuate the mass of those
who are uneasy in their circumstances." * He wrote
to Jefferson, April 25, 1787, that Vermont was not in-
clined to be the fourteenth State, it was said. " Taxes
and relaxed government agree but ill." * Trumbull
wrote to Washington, Nov. 15, 1783, what held true
throughout the period : " It is but too true that some
few are wicked enough to hope that by means of this
clamour they may be able to rid themselves of the
whole public debt, by introducing so much confusion
and disorder into public measiu:es as shall eventually
produce a general abolition of the whole." •

Patrick Henry proposed another general conven-
tion, to be held as soon as possible.* Lincoln wrote
from Boston: "We find ourselves exceedingly em-

1 Dip. Corr. U. S., 111. 114. « ibid., 226.

• Letters to Washington, iv. 52. * Ibid., 241.

136 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

barrassed by the temper which raged the last winter
in some of the counties. Many of the insurgents
are in the convention, even some of Shays*s officers." ^
Another letter said that the parties opposed to the
Constitution in that State were, first, friends of paper
money and tender laws ; second, the late insurgents ;
third, a great majority of the members from Maine.*
In Pennsylvania ratification was mixed up with the
politics of that State, which had been extremely bitter
ever since the beginning of the Revolution. The
articles of " Centinel " began in a moderate tone,
but gradually became more and more personal and
virulent, and then degenerated into the style which
was used later by Duane and Callender.' The con-
stitutionalists — that is, supporters of the Constitution
of Pennsylvania — were the opponents of the Federal
Constitution. Hamilton thus summed up the elements
of expected opposition to the adoption of the Constitu-
tion : disinclination to taxation, fear of the enforce-
ment of debts, democratic jealousy of important
officials, and the influence of foreign powers.*

The New York convention met in June, 1788.
Hamilton was a member of it, and exerted himself
with remarkable energy to secure the adoption. The

1 Letters to Washington, iv. 206. ^ Ibid., 207.

8 McMaster & Stone, 565. These articles ran for over a
year in the " Independent Gazetteer," and are especially in-
teresting on account of the comparison with the " Federalist "
which irresistibly suggests itself. We are indebted to Mr.
Paul Ford for the discovery that "Centinel" was Samuel
Bryan. (Work quoted, 6, note.)

* Works, i. 401.

NEW YORK ANTI-FEDERALISTS, 137

opponents of the Constitution had two thirds of the
convention, and numbered four sevenths of the com-
munity. Their strength was in the country, while
New York City favoured the Constitution. The oppo-
nents were restrained somewhat by a fear lest the city
and southern counties might split off. Hamilton said :
" For my own part, the more I can penetrate the
views of the anti-federal party in this State, the more
I dread the consequences of the non-adoption of
the Constitution by any of the other States, — the
more I fear an eventual disunion and civil war." The
idea of the opposition was for New York to hold
back and let the others try it. If the Union suc-
ceeded, they could come in, although they expected
that revenue difficulties would break it up immedi-
ately.* The fact here stated, and the apparent wil-
lingness of Hamilton to agree to a conditional
ratification by New York' must be taken as com-
plete demonstration that even the most advanced
federalists did not suppose that the States were
forming an irrevocable union.

Hamilton arranged with Madison »for an express
to bring news of the Virginis^ convention, and with
Sullivan for an express to bring news of the New
Hampshire convention. As soon as he obtained the
news of ratification by New Hampshire, he sent it
to Virginia. JJe employed his utmo st eloquence to
Qarry the ratificatio n, emphasizing the pomt about
the public debt. ^It is a fact that should strike us
with shame that we are obliged to borrow money in

1 Works, viii. 187. ^ ibid., 187. » Ibid., 191.

1 38 ALEXANDER HA MIL TON.

order to pay the interest of our debt. It is a fact
• that these debts are accumulating every day by com-
pound interest." ^ He appeared to be afraid that he
was carried away by his own zeal, and he apologized
for it, saying, " If such has been my language, it was
from the habit of using strong phrases to express my
J ideas." * He declared that in the old confederation
the idea of liberty was alone considered, but that there
was another thing equally important, — "I mean a
principle of strength and stability in the organization
of our government, and of vigor in its operations." ^
This passage might serve as the text of his work in
that convention.

The " Federalist " has come to stand on our shelves,
next to the Constitution, as the first great text-book
upon it. By far the largest part of it was written by
Hamilton, in the practice of his usual method of act-
ing on the formation of public opinion by periodical
essays. In the last number of this series * he said :
/ " The system, though it may not be perfect in every
part, is upon the whole a good one, is the best that
the present views and circumstances will permit, and
is such an one as promises every species of security
which a reasonable people can desire." It is a strange
fact that the man who did all this for the Constitution
should have suffered all his life imder a popular sus-
picion that he was not loyal to it. In the " Federalist "
nothing is said about the debts, and comparatively
little about the Supreme Court. This is very remark-

1 Hamilton, i. 491. 2 Works, i. 495.

8 Works, i. 449. * Ibid., ix. 548.

CHARGED WITH MONARCHISM. 1 39

able, in view of the subsequent history ; for if there is
any " sleeping giant " in the Constitution, it has proved
to be in the power of the Supreme Court to pass upon
the constitutionality of laws. It does not appear that
Hamilton or anybody else foresaw that this function
of the court would build up upon the written Consti-
tution a body of living constitutional law. It is very
possible that Hamilton may have thought that the
Constitution of 1 787 was a step of gain on the Articles
of Confederation, but that it would be superseded as
they had been by some new constitution which would
go farther toward converting the Union into an im-
perial state, — that is, in the direction of what the
opposing party always called " consolidation." The
same effect has been produced by interpretation on
the document of 1787, and by the amendments.

The Congress of the Confederation, having left Phil-
adelphia in anger, was not willing to return thither,
although the Philadelphians were very eager that it
should. It could not find satisfactory quarters any-
where else. This led it to wander about from place
to place, — a fact which undoubtedly lowered its pres-
tige ; for people did not know where it was, or what
it was about, and almost forgot its existence. It was
able to obtain a necessary quorum for important busi-
ness, nine States, only for a few days, or at mo^t a
few weeks at a time. Hence those who wanted t«k
see the Confederation dwindle and die were perfectly
satisfied; and they seized upon some rumours that
there had been aristocratic and monarchical proposi-
tions in the convention, and endeavoured to spread

I40 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

fears that there was a secret intention, hostile to
republicanism. Although these fears were absurd,
they were very far indeed from lacking effect, and
all the events of the succeeding ten or twelve years
were taken to be proof of their truth. There nev^r
was a time when a king of the United States would
not have been perfectly ridiculous, and his position
utterly untenable ; not because of any laws or resolu-
tions, but in the very circumstances of the case.
No opera bouffe could possibly caricature such a
personage.^

If now we look back for a moment at the course of the
movement toward union, we can form an idea of what
the Union was when the first Congress assembled ; for

1 In 1792 Hamilton wrote to Washington, commenting on
this charge that there was a monarchical faction : " The idea of
introducing a monarchy or aristocracy into this country, by
employing the influence and force of a government continually
changing hands toward it, is one of those visionary things that
none but madmen could meditate, and that no wise man will
believe. If it could be done at all, which is utterly incredible,
it would require a long series of time, certainly beyond the life
of any individual to effect it. Who, then, would enter into
such a plot ? For what purpose of interest or ambition ? "
(Works, ii. 267.) In 1800 it was one of the campaign stories
in Pennsylvania, which obtained much belief, that Adams in-
tended to marry one of his children to one of George the Third's
children, and that Washington had quarrelled with him on this
account. (Graydon, 392.) At the same time the story of the
monarchical faction in the convention of 1789 had grown into
the shape that Hamilton and others had a plot to bring over
the second son of the King of England and make him King
of the United States. Hamilton tried to follow up this story
and unearth its origin, but of course it all evaporated at the
first attempt. (Works, viii. 610.)

CHARGED WITH MONARCHISM. 141

if we have an idea that it was clearly understood what
sort of thing the new system would be in operation,
and that people who read the document would obtain
any conception of the modem state which goes under
the name of the United States, we shall make a great
mistake. We have seen that the first Congress of
1774 was nothing but a conference of bodies which
were entirely independent and distinct. That of 1 775
diiFered only in having more serious business. That
of 1776 began to plan a confederation which should
have a constitutional definition. Still it was an ab-*
straction created by convention. The States held the
territory and were States ; the Confederation was an
alliance, and it came near becoming obsolete by fall-
ing into desuetude. Then a new effort was made,
using the experience of the past, to establish a new
creation in the way of a unity of the States in a
political body which should be a state, having a dis-
tinct and independent existence. The question still
remained, however, how much of a state the Union
was, and what the limit of function between it and
the States would be. It was possible to argue and
reason about that by attempting to interpret the lan-
guage of the document, but it has taken a century
of national life and a civil war to actually determine it.
At the beginning, when none of this work was yet
done, every step which was taken was contributing,
by way of precedent, to mould the result.

The great majority of the people disliked the idea
of a govemment with a large body of splendid officers
living on salaries, and administering an army, a navy,

142 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

diplomatic relations, and so on, like the great nations
of the Old World. They knew that one of the States
never would grow into that ; but it seemed that the
Union was created expressly for it, and they did
not see any necessity for it. It is also worthy of
particular notice that, between 1783 and 1789, the
Continental Congress year by year demanded of the
people sums of money for a peace establishment far
beyond what was necessary, and that the people, by
refusing the funds, forced the retrenchment or aban-
donment of the main features of a great civil estab-
lishment, which in fact was not needed. When the
Union was formed, therefore, everything led to a
struggle between two tendencies of opinion. In the
truest sense federalism meant the system and phi-
losophy of union into a federated state, but a true
state, having unity, independent vitality, and ade-
quate capacity. Anti-federalism meant the system
and philosophy of a group of States, co-operating
with one another voluntarily in ways and for pur-
poses that had been agreed upon. Callender said
that the Constitution was " crammed down the gullet
of America." ^ John Quincy Adams said, with more
elegance, that it was "extorted from the grinding
necessity of a reluctant people."

Until after the second war with England, the con-
tinuity of the Union was always in question.* In

1 Prospect, 10.

*-* In 1796 the Due de Liancourt thought that the Union
would break up before one tenth of the federal city was built.
(Liancourt, vi. 149.}

THE UNION IN QUESTION 143

every excited and important debate, even on meas-
ures of the second or third order, the defeated party
uttered murmurs and threats against the Union. The
growth from a point at which some States united up
to the point at which there is a United State, con-
stitutes the history of the Union.

144 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

CHAPTER X.

Hamilton's measures: funding; his political ecx)n-
omy on debt, etc.; assumphon ; party war;

THE SINKING FUND; CRITICISM; NATIONAL BANK;
POLITICAL ECONOMY OF BANKS; BANK WAR; MINT
AND COINAGE.

The Union having been formed, Hamilton was
immediately called to the head of the Treasury, which
he speedily made the most important office in the
government. The great measures which he brought
forward for organizing the government and getting
those things done which he had so long thought
needed to be done, now demand our attention.

During the Revolution the constant cry was " Credit !
credit ! How can we get the things which we need
now for the purposes of winning our independence,
and have the payment for them deferred until, having
won our independence, we can bring our resources
to bear so as to pay?'' The debt to France had
been arranged so that the instalments might become
due from 1787 on; but on the ist of January, 1790,
not only had the instalments not been paid, but the
interest had not been paid on a part of it for six
years, on a part for five, and on a part for four. The
interest on the debt to Spain had not been paid for

HIS MEASURES. MS

seven years. Hamilton took up this matter first.
There was no contest about the payment of the
foreign debt. As to the domestic debt, a struggle
arose immediately over the question whether the
debt should be paid at its full face to the assignees
who had bought the certificates during the last ten
years from the persons to whom they were first issued.
Hamilton held that it should be paid to the assignee.
The government, and not he, was guilty. He bought
at the market. Hamilton shows the impracticability
of any other plan. He estimated the current ex-
penses at six hundred thousand dollars, and the total
interest on the debt at ^12,839,162.^

He proposed a system of import duties which should
be made to produce an amount of revenue to meet
these expenditures. An opposition to this proposi-
tion was immediately developed. There were those
who objected to funding altogether, and those who
proposed different methods of dealing, as between
the original holders and the assignees. Maclay, for
instance, would have paid three per cent as an in-
terim, " and place it on the footing of disability to do
more." He also objected to funding the interest.
He wanted a land office to be opened, and to sink
the interest now due and to give indents for it, receiv-
able at the land office. He declared that " even prod-
igals abhorred compound interest." ^ This was the
most popular position among the rank and file of the
opponents. It was simply repudiation on the footing

1 Report on Public Credit, Folio State Papers, Finance, i. 15.
3 Maclay, 225.

146 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

of disability to pay, and the land office was to throw
the public creditors into a system of land mongering,
to get their pay if they could. Maclay's argument
was that Congress was not a party to the debt. He
says that the people are the debtors, the holders of
the obligations are the creditors, and Congress is the
umpire between them. Law should rule the court,
but justice should be the guide of Congress, as it has
been of all legislation " from the Jewish jubilee to the
present day." ^ He could not get anybody to second
his plan of a land office redemption for the indents
of back interest. He likewise puts forward the
objection that the debt should not be charged on
posterity, especially irredeemable debts. " I am con-
vinced that they will one day negative the legacy."
He ascribes the English wars to the funding system,
peculation, and jobs ; thinks that England is sure to
come to bankruptcy. He argued that the revenue
already established would pay interest " proportionate
to the market price of the public debt until the whole
is extinguished by the Western sales." ^ He undoubt-
edly represented the opinion of respectable men, not
the great leaders of the party, nor its uneducated
following.

In a pamphlet, "Inquiry into the Principles and
Tendency of certain Public Measures," ascribed to
John Taylor, Senator from Virginia (1794), it was
asserted that the funding system was intended to
effect what the bank was contrived to accelerate, —
( I ) accumulation of great wealth in a few hands ; (2 ) a

1 Maclay, 229. 2 ibid., 257.

FUNblNG. 147

political moneyed engine ; (3) a suppression of the
Republican State Assemblies by depriving them of
the political importance resulting from the imposition
and dispensation of taxes.

Of course the immediate effect of funding was
that the securities advanced in value. It was de-
nounced as speculation, and even as fraud, although
it really put an end to speculation. There can be
speculation only where there is fluctuation in value.
This had been the case during the previous ten years,
when there was great doubt whether the certificates
would ever be paid, and how they would be paid.
After the funding they were elevated to the character
of the highest securities on the market, in which
there was very little fluctuation and consequently
very little speculation.

Hamilton wrote two papers in defence of the fund-
ing system, afler he left office, which had never been
published until Lodge's edition of his works. They
are both extremely able papers, the second being
altogether the best paper which we possess from his
hand. He says that there were two sects of heretics,
— one who wanted to discriminate between the original
holders and the alienees; second, those who would
provide equally for all, but at a lower rate of interest
than 'that in the bond. And there were subdivisions
of these.* In his address to the electors of New
York in 1 801, he says : " What is the fimding system?
It is nothing more nor less than the pledging of
adequate funds or revenue for paying the interest, and

^ Works, vii. 378, 414.

148 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

for the gradual redemption of the principal of that
very debt which was the sacred price of indepen-
dence. . . . What have been the effects of this sys-
tem? An extension of commerce and manufactures,
the rapid growth of our cities and towns, the conse-
quent prosperity of agriculture, and the advancement
of the farming ^ interest. All this was effected by
giving life and activity to a capital in the public obli-
gations which was before dead, and by converting it
into a powerful instrument of mercantile and other
industrious enterprise." ^

The " funding system *' was a thing of English tra-
dition ; and as we have already seen, anything which
had some taint of English abuse upon it was regarded
with superstitious dread. It does not appear that
they understood very well what the funding system
was ; but as it was applied here by Hamilton, it had
none of the vices of the English funding system,
which, after all, could be resolved into allowing the
expenditures to exceed the revenue. That is not a
system. A great deal of the argument against fund-
ing would have been pertinent at the time of contract-
ing the debt, but was singularly non-pertinent when
the proposition was to keep a promise already made,
and to take the poor old battered "faith of the
continent " out of pledge. At that point, to talk
about the evils of a debt and the woes of posterity
seemed absurd. The provision for it was indispen-
sable in the public interest. It was a simple, straight-
forward duty.

1 Works, vii. 188.

FUNDING. 149

It is desired here, in connection with each of the
great financial measures proposed by Hamilton, to
make some examination of the doctrines enunciated
by him.

In a passage from Hamilton which has been quoted
above, it may be noticed that he puts forward a doc-
trine with regard to the hfe and activity given to a
capital, which before was dead, by means of funding.
In his bank scheme which he sent to Morris in 1781,
he said : " A national debt, if it is not excessive, will
be to us a national blessing. It will be a powerful
cement of our union." He added that Americans
were too indolent, and that taxation would be a valu-
able spur to them.* In the report on the manufac-
tures, to be noticed below, he says that a funded debt
is capital. Some, fearing accumulation of debt, will
not allow to a debt any utility, but things are seldom
unmixed good or ill. We must get at the facts, and
find out how far they are either. "Neither will it
follow that an accumulation of debt is desirable be-
cause a certain degree of it operates as capital. There
may be a plethora in the poUtical as in the natural
body. There may be a state of things in which any such
artificial capital is unnecessary. The debt, too, may
be swelled to such a size as that the greatest part of it
may cease to be useful as a capital, serving only to
pamper the dissipation of idle and dissolute indi-
viduals," or the interest may become oppressive to
public finance, and the taxes use up national re-
sources. In a newspaper article in 1792, he replies

^ Works, iii. 124.

ISO ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

to those who have charged him with saying that public
debts are public blessings. He says the assertion is
that funding the debt will render it a blessing, and,
referring to the passage jiist quoted, he interprets it
to mean that a funded debt operates as capital. He
says that before the Revolution " a great part of the
circulation was carried on by paper money ; " that this
was destroyed during the war by events which also
destroyed "a large proportion of the moneyed and
mercantile capital of the coimtry, and of personal
property generally. It was natural to think that the
chasm created by these circumstances required to be
supplied, and a just theory was sufficient to demon-
strate that a funded debt would answer the end.^ In
the "Vindication of Funding," written about 1795,^
he refers to the same passage from his report on
manufactures for the doctrine that a public debt is
capital, and adds that if a government borrows a
hundred dollars, it spends it, and that is capital;
while the bond may be sold, and is another. Thus
the credit of government produces a new capital of
a hundred dollars. If what is borrowed is spent
abroad, the case is different. In the next paragraph
he dwells on the disparity between the sum of negotia-
tions and the amount of money by which they are
made. These notions show a remarkable amount of
confusion in regard to money, capital, and debt, in
the mind of a man who has a great reputation as a
financier. Robert Morris had once put forward
some of the same ideas. He argued that a public

1 Works, ii. 321. 2 ibid., vii. 407.

FUNDING, 151

debt locked up the capital of the public creditor, and
that these debts were in a manner dead, and would
be brought back into existence by funding. This
would free the capital of creditors. Capitalists would
buy up the debt of the holders.^

So far as the destruction of the old paper money
was concerned, it could not produce any chasm in the
circulation. It is as impossible to make a chasm in
the circulation as to dig a hole in water. We have
abundant testimony that gold and silver came into
circulation in 1780 and 1781 as fast as the continental
paper fell into disuse. The specie prices were ex-
tremely low compared with those which had prevailed
in paper. The man who had to part with goods or
services to obtain specie with which to pay taxes or
debts, might well think that the "medium was in-
sufficient."

The depreciation of the continental paper inflicted
a loss on the different holders of it while it was on
the way down, who gave goods and services for it at
a higher rate than that at which they received goods
and services for it. They therefore parted with goods
and services to carry on the war, and the depreciation
operated as a tax, according to the observation of all
the contemporary writers. It was, however, the most
cruel, insidious, and unequal tax conceivable, for it
taxed a man in proportion to the time that he held
the notes, and not in proportion to anything else. A
man of large means could, by keeping on the debtor
side^ save himself from all loss ; but a man of small

1 Dip. Corr. Rev., xii. 222.

152 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

means, on the creditor side, was the greatest sufferer.
Those who suffered by the depreciation, then, had
contributed real capital for the work of the war. No
subsequent funding could reach them, unless it pro-
vided payment for notes still in their hands, which
would be only in a very small degree. No funding
nor other operation of any kind known could go back
and unravel such a series of operations and defaults,
to undo, in any degree whatever, the injustice pro-
duced by them ; for its only possible effect would be
to pretend to balance them by a new set of injustices.
The reason for funding was to fulfil contracts
which existed in full legal form, and therefore needed
to be performed according to their tenour. The
operation, however, could not revive or recall a capital
wasted ten years before. We may make good a
capital, but capital once used up in an operation not
industrially reproductive is gone forever. If a hun-
dred dollars* worth of flour was consumed by soldiers
in 1776, while in the field, they reproduced no capital
to replace it. If the producer of the flour had a
certificate for a hundred dollars, which was not paid,
it might lie in his desk as a worthless piece of paper,
the record of a dishonoured claim, which had no market
value. If he found a purchaser for it at ten cents on
the dollar, and sold it, the transaction concerned no-
body but those two, because they made a contract
which included a consenting judgment between them
as to the value at that time of the chance that the
dishonoured promise might some day be kept, in
whole or in part. If then the assignee held the paper

FUNDING, I S3

in his desk, it had in no wise changed its character^
and the original debtor, the United States, had nothing
to do witn the transfer.

If now in 1790 the government determined to
keep its promise, it provided that the taxpayers of
the United States should, out of their earnings, re-
constitute a capital of a hundred dollars* value, and
transfer it to the holder of the certificate, in replace-
ment of the capital consumed in 1776. This new
capital to be constituted, in some years subsequent to
1790, was evidently not a second capital, because
there was no first one. If the taxpayers, after 1 790,
had kept their products, the capital would have been
the same in their hands that it was after it was trans-
ferred to the bondholder, and the certificate burned
up. In strictness, therefore, th^ taxes did not replace
the €apttal of 1776, but only the property of 1776,
and affected the personal interests of individuals, and
not at all the wealth of the country.

The promise that this operation should be per-
formed brought the certificate out of the desk of the
owner and gave it a market value. Let us suppose
that it raised it to par. If then the holder parted with
it to some one else for a hundred dollars, that was
merely a transfer between the two men of two things
previously existing, — the certificate on one side, and
the hundred dollars on the other, — and could not
affect the wealth of the country. In no sense, there-
fore, did funding the debt create a capital, or a new
capital, or a second capital, or in any way add to the
wealth of the country. Obviously its only effect could

154 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

lie where the debt lay ; namely, in the field of con-
tracts, property rights, and personal interests. The
only way in which it could contribute at all to the in-
dustrial interests of the community, taken as a whole,
was in case it affected the relations of this community
as a whole to some other community as a whole. In
that respect its effect was the exact opposite of what
Hamilton supposed. It was only in the case that
these certificates, which had formerly been destitute
of market value, but now had obtained market value,
should be exported in exchange for real capital
brought into the United States to be employed where
it could earn ten or twenty per cent, while the inter-
est paid for it was only six, that the funding of the
debt could act upon the industrial and commercial
interests of the American people.

The next enterprise undertaken by Hamilton was
the assumption of the State debts. In his mind, this
enterprise and the first one were inseparable parts of
the same whole ; but assumption stood upon a very
different footing. It was a matter of political expe-
diency, not of simple financial rectitude ; and its ex-
pediency remains in doubt to this day. Assumption
certainly produced great political disturbance and
bitterness. It was not absolutely called for, but was
gratuitously undertaken by the Federal Government ;
and it has always remained an open question whether
the Federal Government might not properly have
allowed the whole matter of the State debts to stay
where it was, leaving the States to manage the debts
as they could.

ASSUMPTION OF STATE DEBTS. 155

In March, 1783, Congress had resolved: "All
reasonable expenses which shall have been incurred
by the States without the sanction of Congress in their
defence ' against or attacks upon British or savage
enemies, either by sea or land, and which shall be
supported by satisfactory proof, shall be considered
as part of the common charges incident to the pres-
ent war, and be allowed as such."^ The States had
all held back, lest one should do more than another,
because they had no confidence that they could re-
cover from each other. They had therefore borne
very unequally the burdens of the war. It had always
been recognized as the ideal system for the Confeder-
ation that it should have a common treasury, out of
which all the common burdens should be borne. It
was now proposed to consolidate all the debts of the
thirteen States into a debt of the Union. In a paper
which he wrote for Washington in 1792,^ to meet ob-
jections which were brought against the federal sys-
tem, Hamilton gave the reasons for assumption. The
first was to consolidate the finances. He speaks of
scramblings for revenue between the States as if he
meant to have all the State finances united, so as to
have only one system of revenue and expenditure for
the entire country, and that one federal; but else-
where he refers to State finance as if he expected
that it would still present its own problems. His
next reason for assumption was to secure to the
Union resources for present and future exigencies,

1 Journ. Cong., viii. 115,
* Works, ii. 246.

IS6 - ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

to equalize the conditions of citizens in the different
States, lest some should have heavy burdens and
some light, on account of their different exertions
in the war, or because some had chance resources
which others had not. This led to the necessity of
the excise taxes ; but he thinks that it was in general
expedient that the Union should at once get pos-
session of the excises as a resource, before the States
seized it. In his second paper on the funding system,
written afler he left office,* he makes a very careful
and elaborate defence of assumption. According to
that, the leading ideas in his mind were as follows :
He put himself upon national ground with respect to
the cost of independence, and its value to every
citizen of the Union, and he aimed to re-distribute
the cost in a way which would satisfy that idea. He
likewise wanted the Federal Government to have at
its disposal the entire resources ; and finally, he had
a motive of political expediency, which we may well
believe was the controlling motive in 1790, although
in 1795 ^^ thought that it had not been so. He
expresses this by alleging in favour of assumption,
" its tendency to strengthen our infant government by
increasing the number of ligaments between the gov-
ernment and the interests of individuals." His argu-
ment under the first of these heads shows that he was
reaching out to interfere with, and correct action by
the States which seemed to him either negligent or
unjust, and that he could not bear to think that the
States were not behaving as he thought they should

^ Works, vii 423.

-ASSUMPTION OF STATE DEBTS. 157

toward their creditors.^ This reasoning, although it
was creditable to his sense of justice, is not. strong
when regarded from the political point of view. It
remained true that he was reaching out for a duty
which did not necessarily devolve upon him, and was
exposing the Federal Government to a new trial,
when he thought that he was winning strength for it.
He saw that it would be necessary to fight a great
fight, to lay vejcatious taxes, and incur odium ; but he
thought that it would have been pusillanimous in him
to give it up on that account.

This matter was connected with the adjustment of
the outstanding accounts between the Federal Gov-
ernment and the States for requisitions. That also
was complicated by the difficulties of justice. The
accounts had not been kept in a similar manner in
the different States ; there had not been uniformity in
the book-keeping, or in the interpretation of the details
of the system, so that for instance in New York, as
Hamilton said,* everybody regarded the balance of the
account agaiost that State as " wholly artificial, . , .
manifestly unjust, and that consequently there is no
justice in paying it." That was the point at which
GallatiQ directed his criticism of assumption; and he
showed that by taking into account the balances of
the accoimts between the States and the Federal
Government, the Federal Government might have

^ * This pnjustice of the States] may seem to have been no
concern of the General Government, but the cause of credit
and property is one throughout the States.'* (Works, vii. 451.)

^ Works, viii. 444.

158 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

done as much for the States as it did do, while mak-
ing the federal debt only half as great as it did make
it.^ This statement was true ; but in the first place, it
dealt only with the balances of the actual sums paid
by the States on requisitions, and left out of account
the other facts with regard to the burdens borne by
the States for the purposes of the war, which filled so
large a part of Hamilton's thinking on the subject ;
and in the second place, Gallatin was looking at
the matter as if the Federal Gk)vemment was trying
to help the States, which, as he said, it could have
done to a similar degree at much less expense to
itself, by the book-keeping readjustments which he
proposed ; while Hamilton was not thinking of it as
help extended to the States, but as a consolidation of
public obligations, which he thought would produce
great political and financial advantages. The real
answer to Gallatin would be that there was no reason
whatever for assumption, if it had been proposed to
do it on the ideas which he adopted.

Another grade of objection is well represented by
Maclay.* He referred assumption directly to the
main issue involved in it: "The reduction of the
State governments was the object in theory in form-
ing both the Constitution and the Judiciary, and in as
many laws of the United States as were capable of
taking a tincture of that kind ; but it won't do." He
says that the court party have assumption much at
heart.

The measure was carried at last by a combination

' Gallatin's Writings, iii. 121. 2 Maclay, 191.

ASSUMPTION OF STATE DEBTS, 159

between its advocates and those who wanted to fix
the federal capital on the Potomac. The mtrigues
on this point were numerous, and ran in many direc-
tions. In the sequel, the opposition declaimed
fiercely against the corrupt bargain by which this
combination was carried; and Jefferson, who really
made the combination with Hamilton, threw the
odium of it off himself by representing himself as
the dupe of Hamilton. However, the fact of the
case was that this was the combination which suc-
ceeded where a great variety of others were proposed
and tried.^

In the writings of Bache, Duane, and Callender,
assumption was denounced in the most vehement
language, as fraudulent and corrupt, intended to form
a corrupt cohort in the Legislature, which should be
under the control of Hamilton. They regarded it
as fraudulent and corrupt for a member of Congress
to own bonds of the State or nation, since it was
necessary to legislate about the debts in a way which
would affect their value ; and they complained that
the liberty of the government to pay off the debt
> was restricted by the terms on which it was funded.
They also maintained that the volume of the debt
had been arbitrarily and unnecessarily increased for
the mere sake of having a big debt, as if it were
a blessing, of which there could not be too much.
This idea they borrowed and exaggerated from Gal-
latiiL They also put forward an idea which was
derived from some of the book-keeping intricacies of

^ Maclay, 226, 250.

l6o ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

assumption, that the debtor and creditor sides of the
account had been added together. Their argument
about this rested upon the fact that the debt of the
States to the Federal Government on the balance of
account was a debt of honour, and one for which no
negotiable securities existed. If then the total of
existing indebtedness was sought, this debt could be
included ; but if this debt was regarded as one which
never could be collected, then it might be thrown out
of account. The difference between these two ways
of looking at the matter, of course, amounted to twice
the debt of the States to the Federal Gk)vemment.

In connection with his system of funding, Hamil-
ton established a sinking fund. He was under the
dominion of strong English ideas with regard to the
value of a sinking fund, thinking that it was the way
to make public credit immortal,^ and he supposed the
fund to be the security on which the public creditor
would fix his mind for confidence that he would be
paid. By an Act of the 4th of August, 1790, the
proceeds of the sales of land were appropriated ex-
clusively to the payment of the debt; and on the
12th another Act was passed, appropriating surplus
revenue to the purchase of the debt, at not more
than the par value of the bond. The Act of May
8, 1792, constituted the sinking-fund commission of
the Vice-President, Chief- Justice, Secretaries of State
and the Treasury, and the Attorney- General. They

1 The report of Jan. 14, 1790, that on manufactures, and that
of ^795* on public credit, all contain strong passages to this
effect.

CRITICISM, i6i

were to administer the redemption of the debt within
the limits of the right reserved ; namely, two dollars
on the principal of each hundred dollars per annum.
In 1 795 they were charged with the duty of adminis-
tering the pajmaent of the interest, and were author-
ized to borrow within the year in order to secure
punctuality in these payments.

In criticising the sinking fund, it is necessary to
distinguish between the fallacy of a sinking fund, and
the incidental mischiefs which may arise from it. The
object of making a fixed appropriation every year
to the sinking fund is to make sure that the amount
of provision for the payment of the debt will go into
each year's tax levy, and that the gain from the pay-
ments which are made will not simply be absorbed
in a relief from taxation ; but on the other hand, the
fixed appropriation involves the danger that the sum
in the sinking fund will be taken in some period of
financial distress, and the further danger that on ac-
count of some necessity of borrowing, the Treasury
will be borrowing at a high rate on one side while
paying off a debt which stands at a low rate of inter-
est on the other ; and still further, if the gain from
the payments already made on the debt is taken in a
remission of taxation, all the advantage is won which
could really be won from the sinking fund imder any
other arrangement.

These, however, are incidental evils; for there
may be a strict administration of the finances, and
it may not be necessary to borrow, and the public
may win equal advantage from a sinking fund with

1 62 . ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

what they could win in any other way. The real
fallacy of a sinking fund is in the supposition that
there is any device under that name by which any-
thing more can be accomplished for the payment
of the debt, than is accomplished by simply saving
as much as possible from the current revenue, and
applying that to the payment of the debt for so much
as it may amount to.

In the sinking fund of the United States there was
no fixed appropriation until 1802, but in 1792 the
commissioners were authorized to borrow if necessary
a sufficient sum to pay any part of the principal of
the debt which should become due. Hamilton
seemed to be strenuous about the faithful appropri-
ation of specified revenues to the sinking fund, which
was a very laudable care. He wrote a very earnest
protest to Washington, against the sale of the bank
stock, in 1796, because the dividends from it were
pledged to the sinking fund.* His sinking fund was
therefore free from all the fallacies of the English
notions on that subject of the period, but it was sub-
ject to incidental evils, which in its later history were
realized.

Hamilton's next proposition was for a ^national
feank.^ This enterprise also was not essential to the
work of the Federal Government. It had the char-
acter of an independent undertaking, not to meet
an experienced exigency, but to accomplish a benefi-
cial result conceived of and anticipated by the pro-

i Works, viii. 401.

2 Folio State Papers, Finance, i. 67.

NATIONAL BANK. 163

jector. Of course it was a development and realization
of Hamilton's earlier projects of the same kind. The
Bank Act was passed Feb. 25, 1791. The bank was
to last for twenty years. It had a capital of ten mil-
lions, the shares being four hundred dollars each.
The United States subscribed two million dollars, for
which it gave its bonds to the bank. One fourth of
the subscription by individuals was to be paid in
specie, the rest in bonds of the public debt. The
subscriptions were payable in four instalments, semi-
annually, — an arrangement which led to a great specu-
lation in the subscriptions during 1792, and resulted
in a financial crisis at New York.^ Eight branches
were established, as Hamilton sa)rs, without his co-
operation, and in fact against his judgment.* The
notes were receivable in all payments to the United
States.

This bank paid more than eight per cent per annum
dividend during its existence, and its stock was quoted
at from twenty to forty per cent above par.3

The country imdoubtedly needed, at this period,
some banking institutions to bring into full activity
the capital possessed by its people. This was a need,
not of the government, but of the people, and banks
were already being formed to satisfy the need. The
necessity that the United States government should
proceed to provide an institution of this kind was
never established. This bank was very much more
like the Bank of England than either of the previous

1 Works, ii. 235 ; viii. 227, 233, 240, 245.

* Ibid., viii. 237. • Seybert's Statistics, 520.

1 64 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

projects which Hamilton had put forward. In the
fundamental principles of its constitution it was/ as
the Bank of England originally was, a syndicate of
holders of the public debt who were incorporated and
granted a monopoly of issuing notes, as far as the
power of the Federal Government could control that
monopoly. There was no need, in the case of the
Bank of the United States, of allowing subscriptions in
the public debt. The public debt was all provided
for independently of the bank. This was only a
measure for carrying out another notion which was
stigmatized as English, with more reason than in
other cases ; namely, that of interweaving the inter-
ests of wealthy men with those of the government.-
The government of the United States never realized
any gain whatever from this device. The expectation
was unfounded and illusory, and the opposition were
justified in saying that if it had been real, it -would
have been derogatory to the government.

Another very great vice in Hamilton's bank was
the arrangement by which the United States gov-
ernment, being itself at the time impecunious, sub-
scribed stock in the bank and gave its note for the
subscription. This example was imitated with ruinous
effect by private individuals in the United States dur-
ing the next fifty years or more. Very naturally,
impecunious individuals inferred that if a number of
them combined and put m their stock notes, they
could make a bank and win the same advantages
which the impecunious government had won. This
bank therefore planted the seeds of the wild- cat

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF BANKS. 165

banking with which the United States was cursed
until the civil war, and also the vices, fallacies, and
poUtical disturbances of Jackson's bank war may be
traced up to it in no small degree. The opposition
party paid Hamilton the homage in 181 6 of imi-
tating his bank very closely, including its worst faults ;
that is to say, when themselves in financial straits,
they knew of no better measures to adopt than those
devices of his which they had most vehemently
abused. This may, in fact, be said of the entire
financial system which they adopted in the second
war.

Let us now see what Hamilton's doctrines were on
the subject of banks and money.

In his letter to Duane in 1780 he said that a tax
in kind was necessary, because " the money in cir-
culation is not a sufficient representative of the pro-
ductions of the country, and consequently no revenue
raised from it as a medium can be a competent
representative of that part of the product of the coun-
try which it is bound to contribute to the support
of the public." In 1781 he said^ that land ought
not to be heavily taxed, because if it is, it will drive
population to the new land. Labour is and will be
dear, " to reduce which, and not to increase it, ought
to be a capital object of our policy." He also main-
tained that taxation on goods was divided between
the buyer and seller according to supply and demand.
In his bank scheme of 1781 he. said : "The tendency
of a national bank is to increase public and private

^ Works, i. 265.

l66 ALEXANDER HAMILTON

credit." And again : " The real wealth of a nation
consisting in its labour and commodities, is to be esti-
mated by the sign of that wealth, its circulating cash."
And again : " Our paper was in its nature liable to
depreciation, because it had no funds for its support,
and was not upheld by private credit. . . . No paper
credit can be substantial or durable which has not
funds [that is, taxes or other revenues provided for
its redemption], and which does not unite immedi-
ately the interests and influence of the moneyed men
in its establishment and preservation. A credit be-
gun on this basis will, in process of time, greatly ex-
ceed its funds. But this requires time and a well
settled opinion in its favour." In 1 782 he wrote to
Morris ^ that the wheels of circulation were clogged
for want of commerce and a sufficient medium. Men-
tor answered to Phocion, in 1 784 : " Money is a
conveniency, not an article of trade. Being such,
wherever trade centres, money will." In his reply to
Mentor, Hamilton took no notice of this. In the
" Federalist " he speaks of " the real scarcity of money
incident to a languid and mutilated state of trade." *
In his report on the public credit he says that he
wants to contract a loan abroad, because to pay the
instalments due on the American debt abroad would
drain off specie. In his report on the national bank
he tries to state the advantages of a bank. He men-
tions the " augmentation of the active or productive
capital of a country." " Gold and silver, when they
are employed merely as the instrument of exchange

1 Works, viii. 70. * Ibid., ix. 69.

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF BANKS, 167

and alienation, have been, not improperly, denomi-
nated dead stock, but when deposited in bank to be-
come the basis of a paper circulation which takes their
character and place, as the signs or representatives of
value, they then acquire life, or in other words, an ac-
tive and productive quality." He explains this by
saying that money in a merchant's chest is idle, but
put in a bank yields profit. " It is a well established
fact that banks in good credit can circulate a far
greater sum than the actual quantum of their capital
in gold and silver." The advantages he expecwnrom
a national bank are, loans to government, and facili-
tation of the payment of taxes.

In these passages we see that he was under the do-
minion of the most vicious fallacies with regard to
money and banking, and that his idea of a bank did
not go beyond some of the most vulgar misconcep-
tions about it. Banks do not increase capital in the
slightest degree. They make nothing; they are a
part of the industrial organization, and their utility,
which can hardly be overestimated, consists in height-
ening the circulating movement in the organization in
a way which makes a certain amount of capital very
much more effective. They therefore affect the rela-
tions of capital and of producers in the way of credit.
These, however, are relations, not things. The idea
that a bank, by some magic or other, gives validity to
a fiction, must be entirely discarded. This is the no-
tion which lies at the basis of the devices for floating
some large amount of paper money on a small basis,
which we detect in the above passages. If there were

i68 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

no banks and no paper money, and if everybody who
bought anything, handed over a bag of specie, in pay-
ment for it, everybody would be obliged to keep on
hand a large amount of specie all the time. This
would be an investment of so much of his capital, and
would lessen the amount which he could employ pro-
ductively in his industry. This is the only sense in
which a specie capital could be said to be " dead."
It is evident that in this mode of doing business there
would be a constant canying backward and forward
of bags of specie, while it would also be found that
the transactions admitted of a cancellation, so that
the money might lie still and not be carried at all,
provided only that some record could be made of the
transactions, so as to find out where the cancellation
would fall. Practically it would be impossible for
anybody, even if he had the record, to oversee and
comprehend it so as to indicate the cancellations.
The first automatic device for accomplishing them
is bookkeeping. The next step is, not only to carry
the accounts on a ledger, but to put them in current
form, so that they can be negotiated. When this is
done, the negotiable instruments can be bought and
sold any number of times during a convenient inter-
val, and then be brought to the record on the books
for cancellation of the accounts, whereupon the nego-
tiable instruments disappear. The bank notes are
simply a very convenient and universal form of these
negotiable instruments, and their amount is deter-
mined by the necessities and the convenience of the
business to be done. The thing which floats them is

BANK WAR. 169

the equivalence of. the transactions in the market,
where the buyings equal the sellings, and the pay-
ments equal the loans. Banks therefore, whether they
issue or not, economize enormously the investment in
specie, not because, if they issue, they put a cheap
kind of money in place of it, but because they obvi-
ate the necessity of using it. They also greatly ac-
celerate all the transactions, both of exchange and
production, because they give promptitude both to
the advances and the returns of capital, and render
production and exchange, in effect, continuous, where
they would otherwise be broken by intervals at the
successive steps of the operation.

The bank also brought out a vehement onslaught
from the opposition. It was regarded as containing
a privilege for those who could get into it, and we
must observe that there was always present a large
element of envy toward any superiority or advantage,
which led a certain party to aim to destroy it or pull
it down, rather than that anybody else should enjoy
it while they could not. Taylor, in the pamphlet pre-
viously mentioned,^ stated the doctrine which he held
as follows : " Debt is service or labour, and service or
labour is slavery. . . . For, money being the represen-
tative of labour, and the only medium by which debt
can be paid, the creditor is in fact the master of the
debtor, for the quantum of service or labour necessary
to discharge the debt. If so, the United States are,
by the bank contrivances, placed precisely in the sit-
uation of a slave who has purchased of his master

^ Principles of Public Measures, ^^,

170 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

about four days* freedom in each week ; because for
more than one day in each week they owe service
to the Bank of the United States^ and for about two
days to the several banks now operating. How im-
properly, then, do we speak 1 Instead of saying, ' The
Bank of the United States,' it would be more proper
to say, ' The United States of the Bank.* '* He says
that a design exists for setting up a monarchy and
aristocracy. The proof of it is in the Secretary of the
Treasury's bank scheme. " The bank is perpetually
betting one hundred to one hundred and six; the
wager is alwa)rs drawn, and the bank receives the six
in every hundred by way of forfeit." The gain of the
bank implies a loss to somebody, because it is a traffic
of ideas, not of substances. The bank has a monop-
oly of the circulating medium. Bank profits are a tax
on the community.

The next of Hamilton's enterprises was the mint.
He entered into an investigation of the value of the
Spanish dollar. He found that changes had taken
place in it within a century, and he thought that, on
account of these, the real unit of account had been
24J grains of fine gold. He also discussed the re-
lation of gold and silver, and seemed inclined to make
some criticisms on the acts of Congress already passed
in 1 785 and 1 786 for a gold and a silver dollar, which
were the work of Jefferson. He was, " upon the whole,
strongly inclined to the opinion that a preference
ought to be given to neither of the metals for the
money unit. Perhaps if either were to be preferred,
it ought to be gold rather than silver." He declared that

MINT AND COINAGE, 171

-the undervalued metal would be banished. " General
utility will best be promoted by a due proportion of
both metals," gold for large, silver for small transac-
tions. He had no plan for securing this. He reached
the conclusion that the unit in the United States ought
to correspond with 24I grains of pure gold and
37 1 J grains of pure silver. The latter he reached
by taking the average of the last two Spanish dollar
coinages. He proposed that each coin should be
eleven twelfths fine, which would make the gross
weight of the silver dollar four hundred and five
grains. He opposed Jefferson's plan, which was to
make the silver dollar contain three hundred and sixty-
five grains pure, and to derive the gold dollar from it
at the ratio of fifteen to one. His discussion of this
entire subject has a superficial aspect of learning ; but
he had not mastered any point in the question, and
the jealousy between himself and Jefferson cannot be
overlooked.* If his paper was to pass as a production
of his day and generation, it might be awarded high
merit ; but if it should be presented now as an au-
thority worthy of any serious attention in respect
to ** bimetallism," its pretensions must be entirely
rejected.

^ Folio State Papers, Finance, i. 91.

172 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

CHAPTER XI.

THE REPORT ON MANUFACTURES ; THE POLITICAL
ECONOMY OF IT; THE LOGIC OF THE POSITION OF
THE UNITED STATES AS TO TRADE.

The next subject to which he turned his attention
was '' manufactures." A This enterprise again pre-
sented another phase of statesmanlike activity. The
funding of the federal debt, with the sinking fund, and
the mint, were legitimate tasks which presented them-
selves in the business of the new government. The
assumption might have been neglected. The national
bank was a voluntary enterprise; it was not im-
posed upon him. The report on the manufactures
was a general disquisition on government policy, in a
matter in which it was questionable whether the gov-
ernment properly had any policy. A large part of the
document is occupied by an attempt to prove that he
had any right to take up the matter, or that there was
anything to be proposed. Of course, it included no
project for meeting any exigency or dealing with any
subject matter which was before him, but it undertook
to lay down the grounds in justification of a line of
policy to be pursued by the government. It could
therefore never be put in practice until motives were

1 Folio State Papers, Finance, i. 123.

THE REPORT ON MANUFACTURES, 173

called into play which must, in the nature of the case,
be interested motives, actuating persons who would
avail themselves of the vague and general principles
which he had laid down to win selfish advantages.

The document is marked by his worst faults. It is
prolix and loose in constraction. It refers to some
of the doctrines of private enterprise and non-inter-
ference, but in a way which makes it seem as if he
must have taken them up at second hand and in the
plump and crass form in which they were currently
repeated. He thinks that the argument against the
" zealous pursuit [which is a shifting of the issue] of
manufactures" would have great force "if perfect
freedom of industry and commerce were the prevail-
ing system of nations." He did not see that all fhe
obstructions put by foreign nations on American com-
merce were the most powerful form possible of the
sort of encouragement to manufactures which he was
anxious for. His further argument 'resolves itself
into an effort to force manufactures earlier than they
would come on account of habit, inertia, etc. He
also alleges as an argument, that other nations have
bounties, premiums, etc., which we must offset. The
obstacles in the United States which have to be over-
come are scarcity Of hands, deamess of labour [which
is the same thing], and want of capital. He did not
admit the high- wages argument. " So far as the dear-
ness of labour may be a consequence of the greatness
of profit in any branch of business, it is no obstacle
to success. The undertaker can afford to pay the
price," He goes at large into the facts which make

174 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

manufacturing impossible in the United States with-
out government interference, and introduces a long
digression about public debt and capital, which at last
he brings to a distinction between " an absolute in-
crease of capita] '' and '^ an artificial increase of capi-
tal as an engine of business/' Here he really comes
so near to the distinction between increase of capital
and greater effectiveness of a given amount of capital,
that it seems as if he might have worked his way out.
A funded debt is not, he says, the absolute increase,
but the artificial increase. He construes all this
argument, however, to prove the error of those who
maintain that manufacturing cannot succeed in the
United States.

He has a controversy here, not with those whom
he started out to refute, who mauitained the doctrine
of free-trade and non-interference, but with those
who dogmatically maintained that the United States
ought to be an agricultural nation, and ought not to
manufacture. For a critical analysis of the paper it
is very essential to unravel the confusion which he
makes all the way through between these two classes
of antagonists. Against the latter he has a very easy
case. He then brings forward three notions which
have become traditional in the United States, but
which were not in the old protectionism, and have
not been treated with much attention anjnvhere else ;
First, that internal competition on protected articles
lowers the price of them ; second, that manufacturing
has some quality or merit as a form of industry, to
promote political and social well-being, which other

THE REPORT ON MANUFACTURES, 175

forms of industry have not ; ^ and thirdly, that trans-
portation is an evil which ought to be minimized, as
if it involved a pure waste. He then specifies eleven
means of stimulating manufactures, among which he
includes inspection laws, means of facilitating remit-
tances! and means of facilitating transportation, —
which show that his analysis is not correct, since
they are irrelevant. Next he discusses different sorts
of manufacturing industry with respect to what he
thinks their chances in the United States might be,
and makes a chance proposition as to the amount of
duty which would suffice to start them here. He had
no authority or guarantee for these propositions at all.
The system of protection to be found in this report
of Hamilton's is the old system of mercantiUsm of
the English school, turned around and adjusted to
the situation of the United States. What Hamilton
especially failed to see was the reaction of the system
which he proposed. Hence he did not at all reach
the philosophy of trade, nor even any philosophy of
trade ; but all that he said on the subject dealt with
the few groups of phenomena which he had hap-
pened to notice, without pursuing them up to any
real relation with each other. He did not therefore
become conscious of the confusion and contradiction
of which he was guilty. In a review of Jefferson's
first message,^ Hamilton said : " There is hardly any

^ This notion is the exact counterpart of the one mentioned
above, that the United States must be agricultural and ought
not to manufacture.

« Works, vfi. 225.

176 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

Stronger symptom of a pygmy mind than a propensity
to allow greater weight to secondary than to primary
considerations." His report on the manufactures
deals entirely with considerations of the third or
fourth order of removal from the controlling facts
and generalizations. This has contributed very
much to its popularity and success since the protec-
tive system was introduced here. All men Uve in
assumptions, traditions, current opinions, etc., which
are in the third or fourth derivative from the truth.
No man ever penetrates behind these to get at the
truth in more than one domain; namely, that which
he makes his specialty. He is always vexed to hear
the uninitiated talk about his specialty, because they
treat it always from the standpoint of the third and
fourth derivatives; but he does the same with their
specialties when he comes to talk about them.
Hence a man who goes remorselessly to the bottom
of things will never have wide influence. He leaves
the rest behind him, and appears to be an extremist.

On the contrary, one who deals as Hamilton did
' with the phenomena of the third or fourth order
moves in exactly that range of confused and unana-
lyzed general propositions which seem to be prac-
tical, at the same time that they have an attractive
philosophical aspect.

For the time being this report and the propositions
in it had no actuality. There were demands for pro-
tection, and some concessions to them were made ;
but interest was absorbed in other directions, and
this proposition fell out of notice. It was brought to

(

HIS DOCTRINES OF COMMERCE. 17 7

light again after the second war, when all the circum-
stances concurred to favour this policy, and it proved
a welcome arsenal to the politicians of that period.
All its notions were exploded over and over again by
Webster, Raguet, Macduffie, and the leading South-
erners of the nullification period, who developed ex-
actly what Hamilton had overlooked, — the crippling
effect of the cost and reaction of protection.

In regard to the doctrines about trade which Ham-
ilton had in his mind, we may note the following evi-
dence. In 1 782 he wrote : " It became a cant phrase
among the opposers of these attempts [to regulate
prices during the Revolution] that trade must regulate
itself." ^ " To preserve the balance of trade in favour
of a nation ought to be a leading aim of its policy.
The avarice of individuals may frequently find its ac-
count in pursuing channels of traffic prejudicial to
that balance, to which the government may be able
to oppose effectual impediment." ^ In the same arti-
cle he made the historical statement that trade took
its rise in England under the auspices of Elizabeth,
and that its rapid rise was due to her fostering care.
He refers to Hume's " Balance of Trade," and affirms
that Hume did not hold government interference to
be useless or hurtful. " The nature of a government,
its spirit, maxims, and laws with respect to trade, are
among those constant moral causes which influence
its general results, and when it has by accident taken
a wrong direction, assist in bringing it back to its
natural course. This is everywhere admitted by all

1 Works, i. 255. 2 Ibid., 255.

178 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

writers upon the subject^ nor is there one who has
asserted the contrary doctrine." ^

The last statement shows that he was very little
acquainted with the literature, but the proposition
which precedes it deserves particular attention. It
is one which may be reached by several different
lines of economic, political, or ethical reflection, and
it has consequently been reached by a number of
very sincere investigators at one time and another, who
have congratulated themselves on reaching a theorem
which solved all the riddles in this domain. It is,
however, nothing but a pitfall, the peculiar calamity of
which is that the exit from it is only with great diffi-
culty ever to be found by anybody who has fallen into it.

It was impossible that a masterful man like Ham-
ilton should consent to that theory of statesmanship
which would have taught him to confine his efforts to
an intelligent promotion of growth, with the removal
of obstacles and gentle impulses at critical moments,
in the direction which his genius indicated as the
paths of prosperity. We shall see that herein lies the
secret of the catastrophe which he brought upon his
own political theory and his own political enterprises.
He naturally could not consent to a policy which
would have dictated to him to withhold his rash
hands, when his whole being was in a quiver to seize
that which he thought was going wrong, and .mpress
upon it at once, and with unshrinking reliance on his
own judgment, the form and tendency which he
thought for the best.

1 Works, i. 256.

HIS OVER-GOVERNMENT, 1 79

The statesman of later times who most nearly
S3nnpathized with Hamilton's view of the duty of a
public man in an executive office to have a " policy,"
and to try to carry it through the Legislature, was
John Quincy Adams. His Secretary of the Treasury,
with his approval, tried to introduce discussions of
"principles" into his reports.^ This second and
later attempt gave the final proof that that practice
is in disaccord with American ideas, and only reacts
disastrously on the public man who uses it.

In the answer to the Rhode Island objections to
the impost, in 1782, Hamilton wrote : "The principal
thing to be consulted for the advancement of com-
merce is to promote exports. All impediments to
these, either by way of prohibiting or by increasing
the prices of native commodities, decreasing by that
means their sale and consumption at foreign markets,
are injurious. Duties on exports have this opera-
tion." Hence he argues that all the home taxes are
far more injurious to commerce than any impost
duties. In 1784 Mentor, in his reply to Phocion
(Hamilton), laid down the doctrine that the balance
of trade cannot remain adverse; that over some
short period there must be an equality. In his
answer Hamilton noticed this doctrine only by the
following: "As to Mentor's commercial reveries, I
shall decline bestowing many remarks on them ; not
only because they are not immediately connected
with the general subject, but because there is little
danger of their making any proselytes, while men

' J. Q. Adams, vii. 347.

i8o ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

are convinced that the prosperity of the national com-
merce depends as much upon the extent of its capital
as that of any individual." ^ It is impossible to be-
lieve that the man who wrote this had carefully studied
Adam Smith within the previous year.

In 1 79 1 he wrote to Jefferson : * " My commercial
system turns very much on giving a free course to
trade and cultivating good humour with all the world."
In the report on manufactures he says : " The West
India Islands, the soils of which are the most fertile,
and the nation which in the greatest degree supplies
the rest of the world with the precious metals, ex-
change to a loss with almost every other country."

These statements show that he was completely
befogged in the mists of mercantilism, for they are
the doctrines of the first quarter of the eighteenth
century.

It should be noticed, however, that Hamilton gave
the following evidence that he was not disposed to
press his notions on this subject to any application.
His tax system included import duties and excises,
and therefore was hostile to any extravagant rates in
the former with a neglect of the latter. In 1 794 he
prepared a project for a treaty of reciprocity with
England, to be used by Jay, according to which he
would have agreed to stipulations limiting the Ameri-
can taxes on all the leading manufactured articles to
ten per cent.' In his review of Jefferson*s message,
in 1 80 1, he blamed the repeal of the internal revenue

1 Works, iii. 501. ^ ibid., iv. 54.

3 Ibid., 313

THE LOGIC OF AMERICAN TRADE, l8i

taxes, saying that the import duties were high, and
that it was doubtful whether they were not too high \
also that if any revenue could be remitted, it ought
to be some tax which weighed on navigation or
commerce. Still he objected, in the same paper, to
Jefferson*s notions of free commerce, — that although
industry ought to be free in the main, "practical
politicians know that it may be beneficially stimulated
by prudent aids and encouragement on the part of the
government.^

The great pity about Hamilton's position in this
matter was that it helped to turn the current of
American opinion against what, according to all the
logic of the American situation, it ought to have
been. It is true that the Americans, as we have
seen above, did not make their revolt as a revolt
against the navigation system, but rather in accord-
ance with it. Nevertheless, the logic of their posi-
tion led them to be the champions of free trade with
all the world. They were, therefore, constantly at
loggerheads with themselves, at one moment grasping
the logic of the situation correctly, and at the next
succumbing to the dogmas of English mercantilism,
which were of course the only theories on commerce
which they ever had heard. Franklin, in an essay
on wages, written about the end of the Revolution,
showed that his ideas had been much cleared up,
although he had twenty years before begun to escape
from mercantilism. "We must not conclude that
manufactures cannot prosper unless the wages of the

1 Works, viii. 209, 2 1 6, 217.

l82 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

workman are reduced as low as we find them in
Europe." Wages will rise in Europe : first, because
of the " greater quantity of labour that Europe will
have to perform in consequence of the existence of
another great nation in the commercial world, and
of its continual increase ; " and secondly, because of
" the emigration of European workmen, or the mere
possibility of their emigrating in order to go to Amer-
ica, where they will be better paid." " In order to
raise the rate of wages, it is enough that higher can
be obtained in any place to which the workman who
depends upon them can remove." ^ Also in a pam-
phlet of information for immigrants he said that the
American States had not encouraged manufactures
by taxes, etc., because " if the country is ripe for the
manufacture, it may be carried on by private persons
to advantage, and if not, it is folly to think of forcing
nature." There are few poor in America to furnish
labour. They " will not be found in America till the
lands are all taken up and cultivated, and the excess
of people who cannot get land want employment." *

In 1 780 the Spanish Court asked John Jay if the
United States had power to protect national indus-
tries. He answered : " With respect to the protec-
tion of national industry, I take it for granted that it
[industry] will always flourish where it is lucrative,
and not discouraged, which was the case in North
America when I left it, every man being then at
liberty by the law to cultivate the earth as he pleased,
to raise what he pleased, to manufacture as he

1 Franklin's Works, ii. 435. '-' Ibid., 475.

COLONIAL DEPENDENCE PERPETUATED. 183

pleased, and to sell the produce of his labour to
whom he pleased, and for the best prices, without
any duties on importation whatever." "So great is
the extent of country in North America yet to be
cultivated and so inviting to settlers, that labour will
very long remain too dear to admit of considerable
manufactures." 1

These doctrines and others to the same effect lay
in the logic of the American situation. With them
should be compared the enthusiastic anticipations of
Pownall, mentioned above.* The protective system
which Hamilton advocated, consisted in borrowing
the traditions of the colonial system ; and as a fact,
although the Americans had won their political in-
dependence, they perpetuated their intellectual de-
pendence by bringing over the dogmas of the colo-
nial mercantile system and regulating their affairs
thereby.

1 Dip. Corr. Rev., vil. 245. * See page 34.

1 84 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

CHAPTER XII.
Hamilton's contests with jefferson and madbon;

PARTY virulence j HAMILTON'S POUCY AND METHODS.

We have now examined the great measures which
Hamilton proposed by way of organizing the new
government and starting it upon its career as nearly
as possible according to his ideas of what it ought to
be. Of course he put his personality at stake on
every one of his measures, in this method of doing
business, by the recommendation and upon the pro-
ject of an executive officer, to which the legislature
was asked to consent. He provoked antagonism of
every kind, sectional, personal, and factional. When
the Federal Government was organized, it was like a
prize, to be scrambled for. If a Union was formed,
there would ht power in it; and the question would
be. Who shall have it? If a Union was formed, it
would be capable of abuses on behalf of personal,
sectional, and other interests. There would therefore
be beneficiaries on one side, and victims on the other.
The Virginians seem to have expected that Virginians
would of course stand first in the councils of a Vir-
ginia president. But Hamilton possessed the confi-
dence of Washington, and constantly won more of it.
He was aggressive and arrogant ; and it may well be

CONTESTS WITH JEFFERSON AND MADISON, 185

believed that his manner to a man like Jefferson must
have been very offensive to the latter, all the more
because, whenever they came in collision,- Hamilton
won a victory. He either proved himself in the
right, or maintained his case so well that he could
not be proved in the wrong. The sentiments of the
two men were also as wide apart as the poles. Jeffer-
son and Madison were already friends, and were drawn
together against Hamilton. Madison sided com-
pletely with Jefferson, and led, in Congress, the at-
tacks upon Hamilton. In every case he was signally
defeated, which seems to have embittered him more
and more. In 1793, when the resolutions to inves-
tigate the treasury, which Giles had introduced at
their instigation, were pending, Madison wrote that
there appeared to be "blamable irregularity and
secrecy." 1 This was giving a criminal colour to ap-
pearances for which Hamilton was, in fact, to blante.
He had not properly and clearly published the facts.
His operations often lacked simplicity and clearness.
In 1794 Madison complained of Hamilton's "men-
torship to the commander-in-chief." * Madison con-
strued the report on manufactures to mean that
"Congress can do whatever in their discretion can
be done by money and will promote the general wel-
fare." Jefferson construed it to the same effect.*
Monroe also, who was a younger man, was attached
to these two, and completely affiliated with them.
Jefferson seems to have furnished most of the animus,

1 Madison's Letters, i. 575. * Ibid, ii. 19.

• Ibid., i. 546. * Washington, x. 519.

1 86 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

Madison carried on the congressional fight, and
Monroe made himself the agent in a shameful afifairi
in which, it is true, the great shame fell to Hamilton,
but in which Monroe did not act with dignity or pro-
priety. Behind these were a second order of party
leaders in the same warfare, like Giles of Virginia;
and behind these still again some of the editors of
the period, who carried scurrility and vituperation
to a degree of which we nowadays know nothing.'
Although Hamilton resigned, in January, 1795, tiiis
personal warfare upon him was k^pt up, not without
reason, as we shall see, and lasted until his death.

In 1 792 he wrote a letter to Carrington of Virginia,*
complaining that Madison had turned against him,
although he supposed that they sympathized on all
important matters, including assumption. He now
finds Jefferson and Madison leading a party against
him, and acting on views subversive of the Union.
Jefferson questions the expediency of funding at all.
He reported in the cabinet against the bank with
asperity, and ill humour toward Hamilton. He op-
poses Hamilton in the sinking fund commission. He
has employed Freneau to edit a newspaper against
Hamilton. Hamilton thinks that Madison is intri-
guing against him, and opposing funding, calling it a
mortgage on posterity. Jefferson and Madison " have
a womanish attachment to France, and a woman-
ish resentment against Great Britain." The former
" came here probably with a too partial idea of his
own powers, and with the expectation of a greater

^ Works, viii. 248.

CONTESTS WITH JEFFERSON AND MADISON 187

share in the direction of our councils than he has in
reality enjoyed." " A variety of circumstances which
took place left Mr. Madison a very discontented and
chagrined man, and begot some degree of ill humour
in Mr. Jefferson." They wanted commercial war with
Great Britain, which Hamilton opposed, and so he
incurred their displeasure. On other matters, except
the additional assumption, "my views have been
equally prevalent [predominant] in opposition to
theirs. This current of success on the one side and
of defeat on the other haa rendered the opposition
furious, and has produced a disposition to subvert
their competitors even at the expense of the govern-
ment." Jefferson is eager to be president; Hamil-
ton is not expected to support him, and must be
broken down. The spectres of monarchism walk in
Virginia. Hamilton thinks that the danger is from
State rights. "I am affectionately attached to the
republican theory. I desire above all things to see
the equality of political rights, exclusive of all heredi-
tary distinction, firmly established by a practical
demonstration of its being consistent with the order
and happiness of society." He fears that the United
States cannot sustain itself against the States. " Hence
a disposition on my part toward a liberal construc-
tion of the powers of the National Government, to
erect every fence, to guard it from depredations,
which is in my opinion consistent with constitutional
propriety." He confesses doubts of the success of
republicanism; its enemies are faction and anarchy.
If he wanted to overthrow the State governments, he

l88 ALEXANDER HAMILTON

would seek popularity, and talk about "danger to
liberty." Jefferson is " a man of profound ambition
and violent passions."

In that year Hamilton was provoked, by the attacks
of Freneau, which he regarded as instigated by Jef-
ferson, into writing newspaper articles with his own
hand in reply. This scandal gave great pain to
Washington, who remonstrated with both Hamilton
and Jefferson. Hamilton replied that he was on the
defensive, and only aimed to defend public measures
against which opposition was forming. He agreed
to peace, if Washington should bring it about.* Jef-
ferson, in his reply, made a r^sutn^ of his charges
against Hamilton. The letter is long; but the chief
points are that he complained, not without reason,
that Hamilton meddled with his department, but he
went on to make calumnious assertions that Hamilton
was forming a corrupt squadron in the legislature, by
interesting members in financial schemes, and that
he did not want to pay the debt, but to use it to cor-
rupt the legislature.^ In August, Hamilton wrote a
long reply, for Washington, to all the charges brought
against the administration. He says : " To uphold
public credit and to be friendly to the bank must be
presupposed to be corrupt things, before the being
a proprietor in the funds or of bank stock can be
supposed to have a corrupting influence." A stock-
owner is not a stock-jobber.^

1 Works, vi. 384.

2 Washington, x. 517. Cf. Jefferson, ix. 96, 122, 126.
8 Works, ii. 265.

PARTY VIRULENCE, 189

Jefferson charged Hamilton with being the author
of a pamphlet " Plain Truth," in reply to Paine's
" Common Sense." ^ He said that he heard Hamil-
ton say that he preferred monarchy, and thought the
English Government the most perfect ever devised
by the wit of man. John Adams, who was present,
interposed, " but for its corruptions." Hamilton said
that with these it was perfect, and without them
impracticable.*

That Hamilton imposed respect upon Jefferson was
proved by other passages in his writings, which we
may insert here, although they are later in date. In
1 795 he wrote to Madison : " Hamilton is really a
Colossus to the anti-republican party. Without num-
bers, he is an host within himself." In 1798 he
wrote to Madison, referring to two papers in Fenno's
*' Gazette," signed " Marcellus " : "They promise much
mischief, and are ascribed, without any difference of
opinion, to Hamilton. You must, my dear sir, take
xip your pen against this champion. You know the
ingenuity of his talents, and there is not a person but
yourself who can foil him. For Heaven*s sake, then,
take up your pen, and do not desert the public cause
altogether." *

It is not easy to estimate the extent to which the
rivalry and animosity of Hamilton and Jefferson have
affected the political institutions of the United States.
After Jefferson became president, his action in more
than one matter betrayed the motive of counteracting

* Jefferson, ix. 126. * Ibid., vii. 389.

• Ibid., 121. * Ibid., iv. 231.

I90 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

what had been Hamilton's pet measures. The unfair
abuse of Hamilton by the other party, from Jefferson
down to Callender, is fitted to drive one too far in
Hamilton's defence. It is a bias against which it is
necessary to be on one's guard.

We must here notice, therefore, that Hamilton's
methods were calculated to raise against himself very
bitter opposition. He forced every issue in its most
direct form. His fearlessness, openness, and direct-
ness turned rivals into enemies, irritated smaller men,
and aroused their malicious desire to pull him down.
At the same time, by the mass he was not under-
stood, and in them he inspired a vague sense of
alienation and distrust.

THE EXCISE. 191

CHAPTER XIII.
THE excise; the whiskey rebeluon.

That one of Hamilton's measures on account of
which he came into the first and most distinctly hos-
tile collision with the opposing forces which have
been described, was the excise. In this colUsion the
logic of the situation was distinctly developed.

Pennsylvania had an excise on imported spirits in
1756, as a "fund" for the support of paper money.
It was revised in 1772, and extended to domestic
spirits, but appears never to have been collected.
During the war, the importation of rum being pre-
vented, the distillation of whiskey became very
profitable. At that period there were in western
Pennsylvania judges who held commissions from both
Virginia and Pennsylvania ; and people submitted to
either, as they chose. "It is reasonable to believe
that by many neither was well submitted to." ^ About
1 786 New Jersey tried to lay an excise on spirits, but
could not bring it into operation.*

In the second report on the public credit, in 1 790,
Hamilton proposed an excise on whiskey, in order to
pay the interest on the State debts which had been

1 Findley, 21, 26.

* Ibid, 31. " The genius of the people will ill brook the in-
quisitive and peremptory spirit of excise laws." (Hamilton in
the "Federalist,". Works, ix. 69.)

192 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

assumed. He said that Massachusetts, Connecticut,
and Pennsylvania had excises on spirits.

Whiskey had not yet come into fashion. The spirit
which was drunk upon the coast was rum. Whiskey
was a domestic substitute among the Western people,
and was very largely manufactured by them in house-
holds. They had no money, and used whiskey in
barter.* That is to say, they could not produce grain
so as to export it to any market where they could buy
sugar, tea, salt, spices, etc., on account of difficulties
of transportation ; but if whiskey was distilled from
the grain, it could be transported. The tax on whis-
key was a specific tax; and as the commodity was
cheap among them, the ad valorem rate was high,
and they could not pay the tax with the whiskey. In
1792 Hamilton reported more or less opposition to
the excise in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania,
Delaware, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Ken-
tucky.^ In that year a convention at Pittsburg adopted
the following resolution : " Whereas, some men may
be found among us so far lost to every sense of
virtue and feeling for the distresses of this country as
to accept offices for the collection of the duty. Re-
solved, That in future we will consider such persons as
unworthy of our friendship, have no intercourse or
dealings with them," etc., — a complete boycott.* This
resolution might have been copied from an old Stamp
Act resolution. Findley, however, says that they never
acted upon it.*

1 Findley, 41. * Works, ii. 248.

* Washington, x 247, note. * Findley, 44.

THE EXCISE, 193

In August, 1 794, Hamilton made a report on " Op-
position to Internal Duties,"^ in which he gave a
history of the rebellion which had been going on for
two years. Inspectors of stills were tarred and feath-
ered, whiskey-poles were set up, meetings were held,
disguised parties perpetrated violence. Findley ad-
mits that the facts alleged in this document were
true with a single exception. A meeting at Pitts-
burg, in 1792, which adopted the boycott resolu-
tion, had put in the preamble that a tax on spirituous
liquors is unjust in itself and oppressive to the poor,
and that internal taxes on consumption destroy lib-
erty. They resolved to oppose the law by all legal
measures. Hamilton drafted a letter to the Governor
of Pennsylvania, to be signed by the Secretary of
State, objecting to the Governor's proposition for
dealing with the Whiskey Rebellion.^ That proposition
" seems to have contemplated Pennsylvania in a light
too separate and unconnected. The propriety of that
course in most, if not in all, respects would be sus-
ceptible of little question if there were no Federal
Government, federal laws, federal judiciary, or federal
officers," and if such and such acts had not been
committed, reciting the features of the resistance for
three years past.

The point he makes against the Governor is that
the latter admits th^t affairs had reached a pass at
which, if the authority of Pennsylvania was at stake,
coercive measures would be proper, but that coercive
measures are not yet proper for the Federal Govem-

1 Works, V. 489. * Ibid., vi. 4.

194 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

ment at the same stage; which Hamilton disputes.
At the same time (August, 1794) he began to write
newspaper articles to instruct public opinion on the
rebellion. He stated the question to be : " Shall the
majority govern or be governed? Shall the nation
rule or be ruled? Shall the general will prevail, or the
will of a faction? Shall there be government or no
government?"* In September the President issued
a proclamation, which was written by Hamilton, one
of the most important points of which was the asser-
tion that principles of anarchy had been dissemi-
nated.* Twelve or fifteen thousand militia had already
been called for from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Mary-
land, and Virginia.*

At this time Hamilton was carrying on the War
Department as well as the Treasury. He proposed to
Washington that he should join the expedition, on
the ground that the adviser of a measure which in-
volved danger to his fellow-citizens should partake in
that danger.* In 1799 ^^ wrote that during that
expedition he trembled at every moment, lest a great
part of the militia should take it into their heads to
return home, rather than to go forward.' In this
expedition he found himself face to face with the
things which he had so long detested, — lawlessness,
anarchy, hostility to taxation, and undiscipline in the
army.

In the whiskey rebellion we meet with a queer echo

1 Works, vi. 18. « Ibid., 5a

• Ibid, 15. * Ibid., 49.

* Ibid., viii. 526.

THE WHISKEY REBELLION. 1 95

of the lawlessness of the period of the outbreak of the
Revolution. In fact, Findley expressly refers to it.
The people " considered the conduct of Congress in
seizing the British posts, arms, etc., while they re-
mained colonies, petitioning the throne, acknowledg-
ing their dependence on it, and endeavouring to have
their just cause of complaint removed, to be a pre-
cedent perfectly applicable to their case."^ They
robbed the mail in order to intercept letters from
Pittsburg, which they supposed would carry news of
their proceedings, just like the proceedings of the
committee at Philadelphia in 1775. Their methods
of coercion, boycotting, whipping, tar and feathering,
were the same as those employed against the tories
twenty years before. They thought that the excise
law was immoral. " This theory became with many
a religious principle." *

The demand which was made on the government
was to conciliate the people by yielding to their de-
mands, and not to annoy or irritate them by an exer-
cise of authority. Findley's plea is all the time that
outsiders did not understand the proceedings ; those
proceedings did not mean what they appeared to
mean. There was always an incidental or construc-
tive relation of things which explained the appear-
ances, and the officers were to blame for all the
trouble, because they did not understand the appear-
ances. The collectors and the inspectors always came
at the wrong time, or behaved unwisely. It is the
chief doctrine of anarchism that the law is to blame

1 Findley, 102. * Ibid., 300.

196 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

for breaches of the law, and that the police are the
ones who cause breaches of the peace. Findley
says : " It is an undoubted fact that the manner in
which the execution of the law was conducted, while
it invited opposition, gave alarming apprehensions
to men of discernment, for they could not otherwise
account for it than by supposing that the disorders
were designedly fostered until they would produce
a more serious issue. Many of them knew that he
who stood at the helm of the revenue department
had no aversion to being employed as a pilot in the
storm."* He repeats this notion many times. He
attributes the trouble to Hamilton's delay or " negli-
gence " to enforce the law, which he insinuates was
intentional, in order to produce a rebellion.

As a specimen of Findley's mode of discussing the
matter, the following may suffice : * " That resent-
ment which formerly discovered itself by casual ex-
cesses, in which comparatively few were engaged, and
those few generally persons of violent passion and
little discretion, now assumed the tone of unreflecting
madness, and drew into its vortex many persons of
good morals, and who usually discovered a respectable
measure of discretion in all their dealings as men and
citizens." Five hundred of them therefore met and
organized a military attack on an inspector, and his
guard of United States troops. " Many attended
solely because they had not firmness sufficient to
refuse." They only demanded to send a committee
to the house to take away the inspector's papers,

1 Findley, 75. 2 jbid., 85.

THE WHISKEY REBELLION, 197

not to plunder it. Hence this was a riot, not treason.
The defence of the house was "rash." "True bra-
very is always connected with prudence." The Uni-
ted States marshal was also imprudent to be seen in
company with the inspector. A volunteer committee
called out the militia. A meeting was held which
banished two persons. It was not understood why
judges, attorneys, and a United States Senator joined
in these meetings, but it gave an appearance of una-
nimity. A committee of safety was formed, and a
resolution was proposed to " call forth the resources
of the Western country to repel any hostile attempts
that may be made against the citizens." He says
that it required great fortitude for Gallatin to oppose
this resolution. There was a real terrorism there, and
the Mingo Creek Association (as we see from his
statements) was imitating Jacobin methods of intimi-
dation. . " No man thought himself safe in many
places in telling his real sentiments." The resolution
was suppressed by referring it to a grand committee.

Findley says that it is mysterious in what capacity
the Secretary of the Treasury went out. He was with
the right wing, and " was extremely attentive to the
wants of the army." He occupied " a superb marquee,"
much finer than that of the commander of the expe-
dition. " To him has been ascribed by some in the
army the measure of discipline that was preserved in
it [that is, in the right wing, for the left wing was
marked by a lack of discipline] ; ^ and the regularity
of the supplies they received, though this was un-

1 Findley, 143.

198 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

doubtedly ascribing too much to him, as a number
of valuable officers occupied the various stations in
the army." He says that Hamilton summoned per-
sons before him, and browbeat them, in order to extort
confessions or evidence ; that he did this to Findley
himself, and expressed resentment against him for
having written lies about himself [Hamilton].*

A very essential fact to be noted in judging of this
matter is that the whiskey rebellion had extended fisir
east of the mountains, and there was an uprising in
Maryland;* indeed, according to another accoimt,
down to the suburbs of Philadelphia ; and " had not
the government anticipated it, a general explosion
would speedily have ensued."* Hamilton says that
Governor Mifflin told him this. Findley also states
that it was not believed in western Pennsylvania that
the militia would really march ; • and he does not
maintain that it was improper for the President to
march the army into western Pennsylvania.

We may therefore conclude that if the rebellion
had not been suppressed, the excise would no longer
have been collected throughout the United States.
Whether in the retrospect it can be regarded as a
wise step to have adopted the excise, and forced the
issue, is very doubtful ; but after the excise had been
adopted by law, that this demonstration that the
Federal Government had force at its disposal which
it could and would use, was a healthful thing, seems

1 Findley, chap, xviii. * Ibid., 241.

* Ibid., 312. * Works, vi. 433.

5 Findley, 184.

THE WHISKEY REBELLION. 1 99

very clear. Such is the judgment of a foreigner, who
may be regarded as a bystander, who thought that
the authority of the government needed vindication,
and that the charges against Hamilton of working
up the whiskey rebellion in order to use force were
empty.* In a letter -to Washington, in November,
Hamilton notices Bache's criticism of him for going
out. He says that his presence had not been useless,
and that he has learned " to hold popular opinio*! of
no value." * It may have no value, but a statesman
•must notice that it has power.

On the trial of the prisoners taken in connection
with the whiskey rebellion the court held that it was
high treason to go with arms to the house of an
administrative officer of the law, with the intention
of injuring his property, or otherwise intimidating
him from the performance of his duty.' According
to that ruling, all who participated in the Stamp Act
riots were guilty of high treason.

1 Liancourt, viii. 82. * Works, vi. 65.

' Dallas, ii. 346.

200 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE STANDING OF THE UNITED STATES IN THE FAMILY
OF NATIONS j COMMERCE ; RESENTMENT TOWARD
ENGLAND j OBUGATIONS TOWARD FRANCE j DIEJI-

cuLTiES OF neutraltiy; grouping of parties ON

FOREIGN RELATIONS; JAY'S MISSION; HAMILTON A

minister without PORTFOUO.

When the War of the Revolution ended, all the an-
ticipations in regard to commerce with which it had
been begun proved to be mistaken.* England, instead
of losing the trade of America, found that it came
back to her. Trade is governed in its course by the
cheapness and quality of the goods, the facilities of
credit, and the tastes of the people. As these were
all best satisfied in England, the Americans began to
buy there. The French merchants who had supposed
that they were going to get the trade of the American
colonies suffered such losses in connection with it that
they abandoned it ; and when measures were adopted

* The first part of this chapter, which aims to connect the
earlier struggles about commerce between England and France
with respect to the American colonies with the struggles of the
same powers as belligerents over the commerce of America as
a neutral, is necessarily extremely brief. The confusion of no-
tions about commerce in the three countries between 1783 and
1793 demands full and separate treatment

AMERICA'S RELATIONS WITH EUROPE, 20 1

for opening free trade between the United States and
France, the annoyance which was caused to a trade
which had taken a shape conformable to the previous
French restrictions produced a clamour among the
merchants, who would not have the very good which
they had hoped for. As time went on, also, the
Americans were not sure whether they wanted treaties
of commerce \ ^ and when the peace was made, there
was no one in Europe with a commission to negotiate
a treaty of commerce with England.* Moreover, the
attention of Europe was now drawn away from America.
France and England were very eager to free their
hands, so that they might notice what Russia and
Austria had been doing in the East.

At this time, also, America did not stand well before
Europe.* France felt that she had been duped in the

^ Congress " are still anxious not to engage extensively in
commercial treaties till experience has shown the advantages
or disadvantages that may result from them." (Livingston to
Dana, 1783 ; Dip. Corr. Rev., iv. 455.) In the Senate inMayi
17S9, all treaties of commerce were condemned. (Maclay, 61.)

2 Soon after the peace in 1782 Hamilton proposed in Con-
gress to renew the commission to make a treaty of commerce
with England. It was referred to a committee, of which Madison
was a member, and never reported. (Works, viii. 366.)

• Vergennes to Montmorin, 1778; "I am beginning to have
a^less idea of their [American] firmness, because the idea which
I had of their talents, their views, and their patriotism is weak-
ened in proportion as I get more knowledge." (Circourt, iii*
314.) Franklin to the President of Congress, Sept. 13, 1783:
Reports of disunion, contempt of authority, refusal to pay taxes,
etc., have greatly injured the reputation of the United States.
(Dip. Corr. U. S., ii. 9.) Reed to Greene, London, Feb. 12, 1784 :
All the ruling classes in England are mortified at the war, and

202 ALEXANDER HAMILTON

affair, and the matter of the debt lowered the stand-
ing of America in Europe. The disposition in England
was not malicious or actively unfriendly. It is not true
that the legislation and executive orders were arranged
to do harm to America.* The disposition of the Eng-
lish seems rather to have been to ignore America and
treat her with indifference. But they arranged their
navigation system so as to hold it intact, for they had
not lost faith in it, and they claimed the right, as a
mere matter of course, to adapt it to the United States
as a foreign nation.* The point where this injured the

speak ill of America, reporting all unfavourable gossip ; we stand
very low in France and not very high in Holland. French
merchants dealing, with America have been ruined. " It is a
prevailing opinion throughout Europe that our governments
and public affairs are in very great confusion.*' Feb. 21, he
writes to John Adams that he is disappointed at not finding a
conciliatory spirit. (Reed's Reed, ii. 403.)

^ In 1794 Hamilton made an examination of the trade reg-
ulations of England and France as they stood in 1790, and
showed that those of England were, on the whole, far more fa-
vourable to the United States. He furnished a brief for a
speech by Smith of South Carolina, on Madison's resolutions
for discriminating duties in favour of those powers with which
we had treaties. ( Works, iii. 423 ; Annals of Congress, 1793-95,
174.) The purpose of the paper was entirely political, a part
of the warfare of Hamilton and Jefferson. It showed how
silly it was to be governed by the fact whether there was a
treaty or not, instead of looking to the facts of commercial re-
lations ; also how easily, when men are influenced by passion,
facts are assumed without investigation.

2 This was the point of Lord Sheflfield's " Observations on
Commerce." Wraxhall (Posthumous Memoirs, 249) quotes
Jenkinson, that if England could maintain the navigation system
she might be said ** to have gained an empire " in spite of the

TRADE RELATIONS WITH ENGLAND, 203

United States was in regard to the carrying trade be-
tween the United States and the British West Indies,
which according to the colonial and navigation systems
the English insisted on doing in their own ships. In
this connection John Adams, after he received his
commission and went to England to negotiate a com-
mercial treaty, advocated the most advanced and en-
lightened doctrines with regard to commerce. If he
could have persuaded the English to adopt them, and
if upon plain grounds of common-sense they had said
what he asked them to say, that there must be every
gain in carrying on the relations of commerce between
the United States and the British Empire with freedom
in 1785 which there was in 1765, the history of the
world since might have been different. As he could
not do this, he turned around and tried to persuade

loss of America. Bingham wrote a reply to Sheffield, saying
that the Americans would retaliate hy a navigation law. A
large part of the bad feeling which grew up may be reduced to
this : the English were delighted to find that they had lost lit-
tle or nothing, that the malicious hopes of their enemies were
to be disappointed, and that the Americans would lose by being
outside the British Empire. Without taking hostile measures
they were willing that all the disadvantages of severance from
the empire, under the reign of the Navigation Act, should be
realized. The Americans were vexed that, on this view of the
matter, they and their trade were not such an object to be sued
for as they had expected. In the English report on American
trade of 1791 the position taken is that a Navigation Act is a
proper measure for any independent nation to adopt, and that
it would be no grievance of England if the United States
should adopt one. Here is one of the weaknesses of retalia-
tion. A retaliatory act is not recognized as such, and exerts
no coercion.

204 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

the Americans to adopt navigation laws, himself for-
getting that if the navigation system of the English
Jiad been injurious to the colonies when imposed upon
them in 1765, it must be equally so if they imposed it
upon themselves in 1785, The thing which appar-
ently irritated him the most was being treated with in-
difference ; * for during the last ten or fifteen years the
whole political policy of the civilized world had turned
upon the value and importance of the American set-
tlements. He therefore urged the Americans, in letter
after letter, to adopt a navigation system, as a means
of forcing the Europeans to pay attention to them ;
and as this policy of irritation and commercial war fell
in with the popular temper, he was only too successful.
Here at last was a case where the demand for an " en-
ergetic government " met with a response.*

Adams and the other American agents in Europe
entirely failed to make a correct diagnosis of the
political situation there, and their prognostications
with regard to France and England were entirely

^ Jan. 26, 1787, he wrote to Jay about the King's speech and
the debates : " The most remarkable thing in them is that the
King and every member of each House has entirely forgotten
that there is any such place upon earth as the United States of
America. We appear to be considered as of no consequence at
all in the scale of the world " (I)ip. Corr. U. S., iv. 481) ; and
again, April 10, 1787 : " The members of Parliament have been
so long irritated and tormented on that subject that they detest
to hear the name of America mentioned, and the political system
and national humour seems to be neither to speak nor think of
it. A seemingly total inattention and silence prevail, and will
prevail for some time." (Dip* Corr. U. S., v, 233.)

2 Secret Journ. Cong., iii. 395.

VIOLATIONS OF THE TREATY. 205

erroneous. It was believed that England was on the
verge of bankruptcy or revolution, and that the next
century would see her fall to an exceedingly inferior
position.

On the whole, therefore, the favourable opportunity
which probably existed at the peace for establishing
good relations with England was lost. There were
charges on each side that the treaty of peace was not
kept by the other party. These recriminations were
extremely strong in America. Jay made a very care-
ful report upon the points in which the United States
was remiss/ which led to a circular letter issued by
Congress in the next year, calling upon the States to
provide for the faithful performance of the treaty ; ^ and
they adopted a letter prepared by Jay, dated April 23,
1787, being instructions to the minister in England,
candidly admitting that the fourth and sixth articles
of the treaty had been violated in America, and the
seventh by England, and proposing mutual fulfilment.*
In a letter to Adams, Nov. i, 1786, Jay wrote : "The
result of my inquiries into the conduct of the States
relative to the treaty is, that there has not been a
single day since it took effect on which it has not
been violated in America by one or the other of the
States." * England did not open diplomatic relations
with the United States, and refused to give up the
western posts, or pay for the negroes taken away.
When the wars of the French Revolution commenced,

1 Secret Joum. Cong., iv. 244 (1786).
* Journ. Cong., xii. 32. • Dip. Corr. U. S., v. 114.

* Ibid., vi. 21.

2o6 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

the relations between the United States and Great
Britain were therefore strained.

As to France, when the war was over, opinions in
the United States were so divided as to the behaviour
of France and Jthe duty of the United States, that
two parties were formed. The division really began
among the commissioners at Paris, .^(lams and Jay
believed that France had acted from entirely selfish
motives, that the United States owed her no grati-
tude, and that she had really tried to hold the
United States down, barely giving enough support to
make her independent of England, but not enough
to allow her to become a great power; also that
France would connive with England to restrain the
growth of America.^ In 1783 Adams wrote: "In
the last * Courier de TEurope * it is said that all the
commercial powers are concerting measures to clip
the wings of the eagle, and to prevent us from having
a navy. I believe it." ^ Franklin, on the other hand,
believed that France had acted throughout with gen-
erosity and good faith. He thought that the acts
which bear a contrary colour were easily explained by
the fear that the Americans, relying on French aid,
might continue the war by exaggerated demands.
He cautioned Congress against the insinuations of
Adams, which he attributed to a jealous and sus-
picious disposition.® The issue between these two
parties has never been solved to this day. It had

1 Adams, ix. 515: Nov. 17, 1782.

2 Dip. Corr. Rev., vii. 148.
» Ibid., iv. 138.

RELATIONS WITH FRANCE. 207

immense political importance for the United States
in the next twenty years.

The course of events in France speedily wrought
out the penalty of the relationship which the United
States had formed with that country by accepting its
aid. The relation of a money debtor developed all
its evils. As soon as the Revolution commenced, the
United States found itself indebted to one France,
although it had contracted the obligation to another ;
and it came about in the end that the Revolutionary
Government were disposed to give the broadest and
most extravagant construction to the obligations of
the United States, on account of the relationship
which had been formed. There were some wise men
who had foreseen this and had objected to the
relationship. For instance, H. Laurens opposed the
plan of drawing on France to pay the interest of
the dett. He called it " giving a mortgage on the
national honour to foreign powers." The result proved
that he was correct.* Also as early as 1781, Jay
wrote to Thomson : " I flatter myself that Congress
will never again attempt to form an alliance on prin-
ciples of equality in forma pauperis.^' ^

Thus the position of the United States between the
two great powers of Europe, which were approaching
a new contest with each other, was delicate and dan-
gerous, while its relations to each of them involved
difficult questions. The course of domestic affairs in
the United States had seemed to prove that the worst
prophecies of the English in regard to the fate of the

* Doniol, iii. 403. 2 Thomson Papers, 40.

2o8 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

United States under independence were to come true.
The anarchistic elements, as we have seen, were gain-
ing strength, and the effect of the French Revolution,
as soon as it fairly opened, was to give them new
vigour. The French proceedings seemed to a great
many to prove that the United States had stopped
short in the pursuit of true liberty ; that the federal
Constitution was what the French called a counter
revolution, and that the United States, having given
the French the first lesson in liberty, might very
properly take a lesson from their pupil in return.
On the other hand, to others, of whom Hamilton was
one, the French Revolution from its very beginning
seemed to threaten to fall into anarchy, and to miss
altogether the idea of true constitutional liberty.

The Americans had somewhat hastily concluded
that when they got their independence they would
be relieved from the danger of being drawn into
European disputes. As soon as the war in Europe
began, they found that their perils as a neutral and
weak nation were perhaps greater than they would
have been if in dependence on, and under the
protection of, one of the belligerents. It was there-
fore an undoubted misfortune for the United States
that at the beginning of their career the political
questtons which absorbed their interest were those of
foreign policy, that domestic parties were formed
upon questions of sympathy with one or the other of
the belligerents in Europe, and that domestic politics
were ruled by the reflex action of these foreign
questions.

COMMERCE. 209

In 1 790 Gouvemeur Morris was sent to England
on an informal mission^ to see if a treaty of commerce
could be obtained, and if negotiations could be opened
for the fulfilment of the treaty. His reports of his
interviews with the Englishmen do not represent him
as very diplomatic in his behaviour. He seems to
have been stiff and offish.^ Although the English
at first received him cordially, his mission seems to
have been frustrated by the fact that he had felt
bound to inform the French Minister of it, whose
intervention was offensive to the English.^ He wound
up with a threat that discriminating duties would be
laid against England, and left the country in bad
humour.*

In the same year, England and Spain having
quarrelled. Lord Dorchester, Governor of Canada,
asked leave to send troops through the territory of
the United States to reach the Spanish territories.
Adams advised that the request should be refused;
Jefferson, that no answer should be given, so that if
they went through without permission, the United
States might be in a position to complain. Hamilton
advised that consent should be given, although he
was by no means clear and positive to that effect.
He thought that a refusal would lead to bad relations
with Great Britain ; that she would conquer Florida
and Louisiana, which would make it very desirable
for the United States to be on her side.*

In the next two or three years the difficulty of the

1 Morris's Morris, i. 327. * Ibid., 310.

• Ibid., 370. < Works, iv. 2i.

2IO ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

relation with France rapidly developed. The United
States was asked to pay the debt in various wa3rs ; and
in 1 793, after England declared war, the two nations
began a commercial war upon each other, having in
mind all the time the advantage which each desired
to get from the neutral, and which he desired to
prevent his enemy from getting. The question was
therefore forced upon the American Government what
policy they should adopt toward the belligerents. In
April, 1793, Washington submitted this question to
his Cabinet, who were unanimously of the opinion
that a proclamation of neutrality should be issued,
warning citizens of the United States that if they
rendered themselves liable to the law of nations by
aiding either of the powers, they would not receive
the protection of the United States, and that prose-
cutions would be instituted against all who should
violate the law of nations, within the cognizance of
the courts of the United States.*

This proclamation was the signal for the outbreak
of the party war. The opposition declared that it
put us in the position of cold indifference between
the parties to the war in Europe, when in truth we
ought to be hostile to England and friendly to
France. It was declared that the proclamation was
without authority; that the President had no right
to make it, since Congress had the power to declare
peace and war; that it was contrary to the treaty
with France, contrary to the gratitude we owed her,
and untimely and unnecessary.^ The arrival of Gen6t

1 Wait's State Papers, i. 44. « Works, iv. 136.

OBLIGATIONS TOWARD FRANCE, 2il

to represent the French Republic offered an- oppor-
tunity for demonstrations on the part of those who
found, in sympathy with the French, a means of
manifesting their hostility to the drift of things under
the Federal Government The swaggering and domi-
neering demeanour of Gen6t, and his attempt to use
the United States for French interests, speedily pro-
duced a crisis in domestic political affairs.^

The drift of things in the Federal Government was,
not without reason, called Hamiltonism, and Hamil-
ton immediately took up its defence. Already, in
1 790, he had maintained that gratitude between na-
tions can rarely have any solid foundation ; gratitude
being due for something done for the sake of the
beneficiary, whereas Spain and France helped the
United States for their own sakes.^ In his Cabinet
paper of April, 1793, he urged that the United States
should cut loose from their obligation. He admitted
that treaties hold good through all changes of the in-
ternal constitution or government, but drew the essen-
tial distinction in the following convincing manner :
treaties ought not to involve other nations "abso-
lutely and unconditionally in the consequences of the
changes which it [one nation, party to a treaty] may
think proper to make."* In May he pointed out,
in another paper, that France had entered upon an

1 Even as late as i8oo Callender maintained that Washing-
ton had no right to open the question whether the French
Minister should be received or not ; for the Constitution says
that the President shall receive ambassadors, it does not say
that he shall refuse them. (Prospect, 107.)

» Works, iv. 29. « Ibid., 75.

212 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

aggressive crusade on behalf of liberty everywhere, and
showed that the United States could not allow them-
selves to be dragged into such an enterprise.^ In the
summer of 1793 he began to write newspaper articles
about neutrality. Defending the neutrahty proclama-
tion, he said : " It only proclaims a fact with regard
to the existing state of the nation," and repeated the
same criticism of " gratitude." * He said with truth
that there was no man in France who was more
friendly to the United States than Louis XVI., and
the positive point which he urged was that we
should learn to avoid foreign friendships. In August
he prepared and issued instructions to the collectors
of customs as to their duties toward the ships of
belligerents.* Jefferson reports him as having said
in November of that year: "If all the people in
America were now assembled, and should call on me
to say whether I am a friend to the French Revolu-
tion, I would declare that I have it in abhorrence." *
In the course of the next few months the proceedings
of England against neutral rights were far more seri-
ous in their practical effects than those of France. In
March, 1794, Hamilton proposed to Washington to
raise an army of twenty thousand men and put the
country in a state of defence against England.* At
the same time, in the " Americanus " Papers, he

1 Works, iv. 109. 2 ibid., 165. * Ibid., 236,

* Jefferson's Writings, ix. 177. Cf. Works, viii. 303, for Ham-
ilton's view of the French Revolution in 1793. He distrusted it
from 1789. (Works, viii. 206)
^ Works, viii 316.

DIFFICULTIES OF NEUTRALITY. 213

was discussing the question how far love of liberty
should lead Americans to take sides with France.
He expressed the opinion that true liberty had been
wounded by France, and discussed the question : If
we help France, how shall we do it, and to what
extent ? He thought that " France may find herself
at length the slave of some victorious Sylla." * In his
writings of these years, 1793 and 1794, it is plainly
evident that his own opinions were clearing up, so
that he was more conscious of the real issue between
himself and the noisy friends of liberty. It was that
he was an enthusiastic believer in constitutional lib-
erty, or liberty under law, but that he detested the
declamatory phrases and empty generalities of the
French revolutionary school, while he thought their
working principles anarchistic.

In April, 1 794, he wrote to Washington that there
were three parties : first, those who wanted peace with
all nations, if possible; second, those who wanted
war, if possible ; third, those who did not want war,
but were anxious to keep alive hostility with England,
even at the risk of war. The first party, to which he
belonged, wanted to prepare for war by military prep-
arations, providing revenue, and obtaining power to
restrict commerce, but to negotiate in the mean time
so as to avoid irritation. He disapproved of the se-
questration of debts at any time, — a measure which
was then proposed in Congress. He thought that it
would now be a provocation to Great Britain. He
also disapproved of non-intercourse, as harmful to our

1 Works, iv. 261, 263, 264.

214 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

revenue, and not very harmful to England. This was
the other proposition which was pending. It is an-
other example of faith in commercial war.^ This
letter, which is very long and contains a discussion of
the entire situation, which was extremely grave, ends
with a proposition to send a minister to England. He
nominated Jay, declining for himself if he should be
thought of; and he proceeded to draw a memorandum
for instructions to the minister, and heads for a treaty
of commerce.^ This was, in fact, his method in all his
work. He sought a device to meet the exigency,
and having seized upon the cardinal idea of what he
thought would meet the purpose, he filled it out in its
details, and proceeded to prepare the auxiliary meas-
ures, or to provide for the incidental necessities, which
would present themselves in carrying it to a successful
result.

As the neutrality proclamation had helped to crys-
tallize parties, by giving a positive measure on which
sides could be taken, the appointment of Jay furnished
another opportunity of the same kind. The opposi-
tion in each instance wer extremely perplexed to say
what they would have done. They indulged in vague
and incoherent declamations, for neither then nor
since has anybody been able to bring any reasonable

1 Callender maintained that the United States, by cutting off
intercourse with the West Indies, could bring England to sudden
and utter ruin. This was the device proposed for the United
States to adopt, if it refused to negotiate and sought to enforce
redress. (History of 1796, 261.) The " Prospect " is full of the
same notion.

2 Works, iv. 283.

J A Y'S MISSION. 2 1 S

objection to the policy of neutrality. The attempt,
also, in Jay's mission, to have peace if possible, was
too plain a dictate of common-sense to be opposed
with any sound argument. There was reason to sus-
pect that it was too sound and wise to be satisfactory ;
and throughout all the declamation it is easy to per-
ceive that there was a comfortable sense of security
that there could not really be any war, and that the
pleasure of indulging hatred of England and love of
France might be enjoyed with impunity, while the
utility of it for domestic party purposes might be
obtained without risk.

In January, 1 795, Hamilton resigned ; but he by no
means ceased to be the principal agent in public
affairs. The position which he held was a very extra-
ordinary one. It might be properly described as a
minister without a portfolio. Wolcott, who succeeded
him in the treasury, had been Comptroller of the
Treasury under him, and leaned upon him after he
resigned. Washington also consulted him upon every
important question which arose ; and later his corre-
spondence with Pickering and McHenry shows that
his relations with the administrations, and his power
in them increased, instead of declining. In 1795, as
soon as Jay's treaty was received, he made a study of
it. In July he wrote a commentary on it for Wash-
ington.^ He objected to the article about the West
India trade, and approved of the action of the Senate
in reserving it from the ratification. He also objected
to the article which made provisions contraband.

1 Works, iv. 351.

-2l6 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

His final judgment on it was : " The truly important
side of this treaty is that it closes, and upon the whole
as reasonably as could have been expected, the contro-
verted points between the two countries." He advised
that the ratification should be sent, with orders to our
agent not to deliver it, if the provision order was in
force, and with a careful remonstrance against the
principle of that order. He had already begun the
work of defending the treaty in the newspapers. He
affirmed that our motto should be " Peace and trade
with all nations; beyond our present engagements,
political connection with none." He said that an
attempt was being made to make us a satellite of
France, and entangle us in all European broils.^

The public feeling had been so excited about this
treaty, without any intelligent knowledge of it, and for
no reason which one can now understand, imless it be
a sentimental unwillingness to have any friendly rela-
tions with an enemy of France, that the attempts to
discuss it in public turned into riot. At a meeting at
New York which Hamilton tried to address, he was
hit by a stone and obliged to desist ; but he began an-
other series of papers, the best which he ever wrote, —
an enlargement really of the commentary on the treaty
for Washington, already mentioned, in which he dis-
cussed every question in the recent history, in national
and international law, and also of sentiment, which
was raised by the treaty, or in connection with it.
These papers really form a large book. They com-
pletely routed the opposition on every argument of

1 Works, iv. 363.

JAY^S MISSION, 21 'J

fact and law which they had raised. He said that the
other party, "if they are sincere, must think that
national honour consists in perpetually railing, com-
plaining, blustering, and submitting."

The battle over this treaty did not end with its rati-
fication. In March, 1 796, Livingston moved for the
Jay instructions in the House of Representatives.
The purpose was said to be to see whether impeach-
ment would be advisable. Callender blamed this,
saying that it was not the real reason, and that it was
not honest to allege it ; that the real reason was to fix
the perfidy of Jay in breaking his instructions, and to
draw Hamilton into the matter.^ Jt is difficult to tell
which of these grounds would excite more contempt
firom a modem point of view. In April the House
resolved : " When a treaty stipulates regulations on
any of the subjects submitted by the Constitution to
the power of Congress, it must depend for its execu-
tion as to such stipulations on a law to be passed by
Congress." This is one of the points in which later
opinion and practice have come to the position main-
tained by the opposition of that period.^

Hamilton said that the real objection to giving Jay's
instructions to the House was that it was " a crude
mass, which will do no credit to the administration."
He thought so at the time, but could not revise the
work of another department. It appears that his own
memoranda were not adopted.* His opinion was

1 History of the United States in 1796, 322.
a C£. 130 U. S. Sup. Ct. Rep. 581.
* Works, viii. 387.

2l8 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

that the treaty was condemned before it was known,
for party reasons. Jay was mixed in New York pol-
itics, and it would not do to allow his negotiations to
succeed, if it could be prevented. He was also a
candidate for the presidency ¥dth Adams and Jefferson,
which heightened the same necessity.^ Fisher Ames
said that " if a treaty left to King George his island, it
would not answer ; not if he stipulated to pay rent for
it. . . . The difficulty is not to overcome the objec-
tions to the terms, but to restrain the repugnance to
any stipulation of amity with the party. . . . Any for-
eign influence is too much, and ought to be de-
stroyed. ... It is enough to be Americans; that
character comprehends our duties, and ought to en-
gross our attachment. . . . This instrument, however
misrepresented, affords to America that inestimable
security [against war which was feared in 1794]. /. .
Profit is every hour becoming capital. The vast crop
of our neutrality is all seed wheat, and is sown again
to swell almost beyond calculation the future harvest
of prosperity. In this progress what seems fiction is
bound to fall short of experience." ^

Dec. 16, 1796, Hamilton wrote to King: "We
are labouring hard to establish in this country prin-
ciples more and more national, and free from all for-
eign ingredients, so that we may be neither * Greeks nor
Trojans,* but truly Americans." * The following from
a letter to Wolcott, April 20, 1796, in the height of the

1 Works, iv. 375.

2 Annals of Congress, 1795-1796, 1249.
^ Works, iv. 436.

JAY'S MISSION. 219

contest in the House, shows how little inclined he was
to truckle to England : " The British Ministry are as
great fools or as great rascals as our Jacobins, else
our commerce would not continue to be distressed as
it is by their- cruisers. ... I hope a very serious re-
monstrance has long since gone against the wanton
impressment of our seamen. It will be an error to
be too tame with this overbearing Cabinet." ^

The French Government construed Jay's treaty as a
grievance to themselves. Feb. 15, 1796, the French
Minister of Foreign Affairs told Monroe that France
considered Jay's treaty as having annulled the treaty
of alliance with France from the time of its ratifica-
tion.* On the nth of March he formulated the
complaints of France in connection with the treaty.
They were, (i) Inexecution of treaties ; (2) The out-
rage committed on Fauchet by the English frigate
'* Africa ; " (3) The sacrifice of the connection with the
French Republic. On the 7th of July he added to
these a complaint that the United States had entered
into an alliance with the enemy of France during war,
and of the abandonment by the United States of the
doctrine that free ships make free goods.* Monroe
closes his introduction with a long paragraph containing
a bitter comparison between the advantages of a close
alliance with France, and the situation created by Jay's
treaty. The latter he describes thus : " War hanging
over us, and that not on the side of liberty and the just
affections of our people, but of monarchy and our late

1 Works, viii. 393. • Monroe's View, 310.

« Ibid., 321, 355.

220 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

most deadly foes ; and we are made fast by treaty,
and by the spirit of those at the helm, to a nation
bankrupt in its resources, and rapidly verging either to
anarchy or despotism. Nor is this all. Our national
honour is in the dust. We have been kicked, cuffed,
and plundered all over the ocean ; our reputaticm for
faith scouted, our government and people branded
as cowards, incapable of being provoked to resist, and
ready to receive again those chains we had taught
others to burst. Long will it be before we shall be
able to forget what we are, nor will centuries suffice
to raise us to the high ground from which we have
fallen." ^ This final prophecy has not been fulfilled.
Monroe*s " View " ought not to be read without Wash-
ington's notes on it.^ They are the most acute and
sarcastic thing we have from Washington's hand.

Jan. 19, 1796, Hamilton wrote to Washington:
" We seem to be [with France] where we were with
Great Britain when Mr. Jay was sent there, and I
cannot discern but that the spirit of the policy then
pursued with regard to England will be the proper one
now in respect to France." " In June he wrote to
Wolcott that Monroe must be recalled, and he pro-
posed Pinckney as his successor.* On the 2d of July
a French decree was published, that France would
treat neutrals as neutrals allowed themselves to be
treated by England. This was in retaliation for Jay's
treaty ; and the Americans found that, having secured
living terms with one belligerent, they were driven

1 Monroe's View, Ixvi. 2 Washington, xi. 504.

8 Works, viii. 377. * Ibid., 403.

RELATIONS WITH FRANCE, 221

ever into a collision with the other. Hamilton fol-
lowed this new phase of the subject by writings which
ran through the winter of 1 796-1 797.

A new element of danger was added by the fact
that there was a presidential election in 1796, and
that the new French minister, Adet, was disposed to
meddle with it. In February, 1797, Hamilton ex-
pressed the opinion that the French resentment was
very much levelled at Washington, and he thought
that the change of administration might afford an op-
portunity for better relations.^ In March he wrote to
Pickering, urging that a special commission should be
sent to France ; that it would be good policy for its
effect on domestic politics, even if the commission
was not received. He was not willing to give a con-
struction to the refusal to receive Pinckney which
should seem to shut the door against explanation.
He thought that there was plenty of room for a com-
mission to inquire what the position of France was.
'* The commission should be instructed to explain, to
ask a rescinding of the order under which we suffer,
and reparation for the past \ * to remodify our treaties
under proper guards." He was especially convinced
of the necessity of the last point. He nominated a
commission, to consist of Jefferson or Madison and
some conservative Northern man, like Jay or Cabot.^

Thus, although he was properly affected by the re-
jection of Pinckney, he was cool about it, and disposed
to proceed very carefully. His writings were suspended
for a year, from March, 1797, to March, 1798; but

1 Works, viii. 449. ^ Ibid., 452.

222 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

when he knew what the result of the mission to
France was to be, he began again the senes of pub-
lic papers, discussing the relations between the two
countries. The X Y Z papers were sent to Congress,
April 3, 1798, and the result was that a state of war
was produced between the two countries.

On the one side the opposition endeavoured to
palliate the corruption of the proposition that the
United States should bribe the members of the
French Directory, and buy a treaty. Callender said
that there was no reason to be so angry, if France
did ask for money; we had paid the Algerines for
a treaty. He said that the X Y Z story was an im-
posture; that there was no harm in a gift to the
Directory, and that the money would have been well
expended to obtain their friendship.^

On the other hand, there was no real desire for
war. It was difficult to imagine that the United
States would be invaded, so that a domestic army
would be necessary. The expense was a terror. The

Secretary of War was not at all anxious to occupy
his office during hostilities. The Secretary of the
Treasury was timid.^ There were only a few — and it
is not clear that Hamilton was one of them — who re-
joiced at the opportunity for establishing an army
and navy. There was a disposition to use the en-
thusiasm of the moment to accomplish some objects
which were regarded as of permanent importance,
and it may be that Hamilton sympathized with it, but
the evidence of it is not in his works. When he

1 Prospect, 58, no, 129, 131. 2 Works, vi. 167.

FEDERALIST FOREIGN POLICY, 223

heard of Adams's message of Feb. 18, 1799, nomi-
nating Murray to be joint minister to France with
Pinckney, he wrote that Murray was not strong
enough for the position, and that there ought to be
three ; also that he would write further, but no later
letter exists.

It was, then, no light trial which befell the infant
State, to maintain neutrality, defend its rights, pre-
serve peace, and grow into strength, between two such
belligerents abroad and its own volatile population at
home. It is not strange that it did not succeed ; but
the foreign policy of the federalists commands far
more unqualified praise than their domestic poUcy.
They met a^demand for sentimental politics in foreign
policy, and for a connection between this country and
a foreign nation, in which relation this country would
be a very inferior and dependent party, by doctrines
of complete national independence and impartial
neutrality, which we would to-day regard as the purest
commonplaces of national policy. Both in and out of
office, Hamilton's mind was the one which guided
and prevailed in that policy. He had the initiative
position, and he contributed the creative energy to
devise measures for the various difficulties as they
arose. During the first three administrations the
federalists were not in any active sympathy with Eng-
land. Their opposition to entanglement with France
produced an appearance of such sympathy which was
entirely accidental. After the nineteenth century
opened the case changed. They came to believe
that England's contest with Napoleon meant a war

224 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

of liberty against military depotism. It was then their
turn to •' sympathize with liberty." It is, however,
one of the most extraordinary iacts in history, that
the Jeffersonians, after they came to power should
have all the questions of foreign policy which arose
under the federal administrations presented to them
over again, and should have an opportunity to try
their policy on the same field and under nearly the
same conditions as the federalists.

The struggle for neutrality lay outside the main
current of Hamilton's career. The significance of it
was that, by bringing to a peaceful settlement the
open questions in the peace of 1783 and extricating
the country from its entanglements with France, the
United States obtained true political independence
of Europe. In Washington's Farewell Address, he
helped to formulate the doctrines of international
independence and internal concord.*

1 Binney, Washington's Farewell Address.

STATE OF WAR WITH FRANCE, 225

CHAPTER XV.

STATE OF WAR WITH FRANCE ; THE PROVISIONAL ARMY j

HAMILTON'S POSITION IN IT.

The matter of neutrality, therefore, had, in 1798,
entered on a new phase ; and the United States found
itself in a state of war. Hamilton's work in this new
state of things also changed in form. He became
second in command of the army, and in this new
field of activity he distinguished himself by the appli-
cation to military affairs of the same energy which
he had displayed in the literary combats of the pre-
vious five or six years. Being dissatisfied with the
energy of the Secretary of War, he wrote urging that
himself and Klnox should be called into service, in
order that he might helpi He wanted in this way to
get a chance to do what he thought that the Secre-
tary was neglecting.* On the ist of November, 1798,
he went to Trenton, where the officers of the govern-
ment then were, on account of the yellow fever in
Philadelphia, to confer with Wilkinson and Mc Henry.
This conference was with regard to possible enter-
prises against the Spanish possessions on the south-
west. Hamilton always had the interests of the
United States in that quarter distinctly before his

* Works, vi. 91.
15

226 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

mind. In January, 1 799, he wrote : " I have been
long in the habit of considering the acquisition of
those countries as essential to the permanency of the
Union, which I consider as very important to the
welfare of the whole. " * Indeed, it appears that his
ideas went even further. In June, 1 799, he wrote :
" We ought to look to the possession of the Floridas
and Louisiana, and we ought to squint at South Amer-
ica." * It was charged against him that he desired
to use the army for domestic purposes, in order to
enforce that " energetic " and high-toned administra-
tion which he desired. The proof of such a desire on
his part is wanting, but he did believe that a war with
France would be a war with her ally, Spain, and that
it would open an opportunity which ought to be used.
For this purpose he wanted to carry the army up to
its proposed limit, fifty thousand. He wanted to
think of classing all males between eighteen and forty-
five for the militia, so that drafts could be made in
case of invasion. He also engaged in correspondence
with Miranda in furtherance of the same enterprise.*

1 Works, viii. 523.

2 Works, vi. 136, 185. In 1802 and 1803 ^^ followed with
great anxiety the transfer of Louisiana to France. We should
negotiate for it, and, if that fails, take it by force. " Energy is
wisdom." He would not have joined the federalist disunion-
ists whose grievance was the acquisition of Louisiana. (Works,
viii. 606 ; V. 465.) There is a vague report in J. Q. Adams's
Diary in 1829, that Hamilton wrote to Madison in order to
quiet Jefferson's scruples about the constitutional power to
buy Louisiana. (Diary, viii. 117.)

8 Works, viii. 505.

THE PROVISIONAL ARMY, 227

But the most interesting thing in this connection
is to notice his indefatigable industry. Dec. 13,
1798, he drafted a letter which Washington might
send in reply to inquiries of McHenry, which really
covered all the important points of army business at
the time, including details of organization, discipline,
and uniform.* He drew up plans of defence, incli^d-
ing army, navy, military academy, loans, taxes, and
secret service money.* He formed plans for prevent-
ing desertion, and reported to Washington on the
state of recruiting in the different States. He prepared
plans for the commissariat and quartermaster's de-
partment, also for the medical department, for the
organization of the militia.* As to the latter his idea
was that, " in case of domestic insurrection, no man
able to serve shall be excused on any condition.**
One who refused was to be imprisoned or forced to
labour on the public works. In August he wrote to
McHenry, urging him to organize a supply depart-
ment, and warning him of the defects of the account-
ability in the service. In November he wrote again,
trying to put some of his own vigour into the Secretary :
"Confidence must sometimes be reposed in an after
legislative sanction and provision,** in incurring ex-
pense. " I commit myself, without hesitation, to the
consequences of this opinion, because, as far as I am
concerned, I would rather be responsible on proper
occasions for formal deviations, than for a feeble, in-
sufficient, and unprosperous course of business, pro-

1 Works, vi. 97. « Ibid., 138.

< Ibid., 144, 148, 149.

228 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

ceeding from an over-scrupulous adherence to general
rules ; and I have no doubt that a different spirit will
ever be found in experience injurious, equally to the
interests of the State and to the reputation and success
of the persons whom it may govern." *

This passage expresses the temper of the man more
completely than any other which he ever wrote. His
mind being fixed on the thing to be done, his ener-
getic striving for it was impatient of formal obstacles
and unnecessary difficulties. It is evident also how
the principle which he laid down must involve him in
responsibility. One of his most remarkable traits^
contrasting in the strongest manner with his contem-
poraries, was his fearlessness of responsibility. If he
went upon that principle, he was sure to bear the
brunt of every contest provoked by his enterprises;
and as he was always in advance of other people, he
was sure to excite their wonder, doubt, and suspicion
by his enterprises. His notion that the principle he
advocated must redound to the " reputation and suc-
cess of the persons whom it may govern " was most
fallacious, as his own experience proved. Jefferson's
reputation and success show how those two things are
to be won. It certainly was not by committing one's
self unreservedly to the advocacy of such measures as
one considered useful for the public good, and con-
stantly spending one's effort in devising new measures
of that kind, without regard to the interests, personal
feelings, prejudices, etc., which those measures were
sure to encounter.

1 WorTcs, vi. 259.

THE PROVISIONAL ARMY, 229

In November he prepared a complete plan of a
military academy, and proposed that the work of pre-
paring improved tactics should be divided up among
competent persons. In December he sent a plan for
uniforms, and wanted a revision of the articles of war
undertaken. In 1800 he undertook an investigation
of the " step ** which would be most advantageous
for army marches, and prepared a plan for the pay
department.^

The army was disbanded in June, 1800; but he
continued his work for the organization of the peace
establishment, forts, arsenals, etc., etc. He was badly
needed in the second war, when things fell back into
all the evils of loose and negligent administration.

Before the disbandment of the army was reached,
however, and while he was expending the energy which
has been described upon the organization, the effect
of it upon the public was to make them wonder why
he did it, and what he was preparing for, and to make
them suspect that he had some ulterior design. They
could not understand why he should leave a lucrative
profession, to accept a position on a very moderate
salary, and devote all his time to this business ; and it
was easy for the opposition to interpret this action,
especially in connection with Fries*s rebellion, as a
part of that scheme for overthrowing the RepubUc
with which their leaders had been charging him for
seven or eight years.

The accumulated and pent-up rancour of years,
the inevitable reaction of the popular temper against

1 Works, vi. 91 ^/ seq.

230 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

a disciplinary regime which, although called for, was
undeniably pushed on with rigour and severity beyond
due measure, were bringing on a crisis in which party
virulence reached a greater height, perhaps, than it
has ever reached since. Callender wrote, in 1 800 :
" Every Virginian who values his freedom should pre-
pare himself to meet the worst that may happen. He
should perfect himself in the use of a musket with as
much diligence as the devotee learns his catechism." ^
Virginia had already begun to arm. When Hamil-
ton heard of it he wrote that the government should
face the risk that "the opposers of the government
are resolved, if it should be practicable, to make its
existence a question of force ^^ He proposes measures
to strengthen the Union: (i) an extension of the
judiciary; (2) construction of roads to facilitate
communication; (3) a society to reward inventions
and improvements. He proposed (in a private letter)
a system of federal justices of the peace to reach
petty divisions, to build more ships of war, to cut
up the great States, to pass laws against incendiary
and seditious practices. This is to be the unpublished
programme of the federalists.^

1 Prospect, 88. 2 Works, viii. 518.

THE ELECTION OF 1800. 23 1

CHAPTER XVI.

THE ELECTION OF 1800; THE CATASTROPHE OF THE
FEDERALISTS ; HAMILTON'S ' LATEST VIEWS AND
SENTIMENTS.

We have described Hamilton's position after his
resignation as that of a minister without a portfolio.
This position was harmless during Washington's ad-
ministration ; for when Washington himself was con-
sulting Hamilton, and knew that his secretaries were
doing so, there was no ground of complaint. The
Cabinet, however, continued on under Adams ; for,
according to the notions of that time, the Cabinet
ministers would be far more permanent officers than
the President, and it was conceivable that a set of
ministers might remain for a long period in charge of
the great departments, while the President was chang-
ing every four years. This was one of the cases
where it remained for experience to prove how
impracticable a plan of this matter was, which
seemed at first to be a matter of course.

When, now, Hamilton continued under Adams's
administration to give advice to the same ministers,
both gratuitously and at their request, upon all the
important public questions, not, it is true, under
concealment from the President or in deception of

232 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

him, but still without the knowledge to which he
certainly was* entitled, the proceeding seems improper
and unjustifiable. It is true that Mr. Adams's per-
sonal character was irascible, jealous, and suspicious ;
but that fact is entirely irrelevant, since a President
of the United States must have been contemptibly
meek to allow any such arrangement to stand without
resenting it. It is also true that the long absences of
Adams from the seat of government, on account of
which he left to his secretaries a great deal of inde-
pendence and responsibihty, were the cause of their
seeking advice and support from Hamilton, and it
may be said, by way of excuse, that they were con-
tinuing a habit which had been formed, without
probably realizing the aspect which it would bear
from the standpoint of the President ; but it was un-
avoidable that this system should produce a catas-
trophe. It is to be noted, also, that so long as the
war was anticipated and military measures were being
taken, Hamilton, as real head of the army, was rising
in importance. That he and his friends should be
pleased at this state of things, but that it should be a
powerful motive for Adams to seek peace, was, to say
the worst of it, human nature.

In 1798 the leading federalists were carried away
by the momentum of their own ideas. They were
unconsciously trying to use the French incident as a
means of carrying " high-spirited " measures. They
had fallen under the fate which seems to beset all par-
ties, that in the course of time their own best tenets
become fixed ideas, which rise to a dominion over

THE ELECTION OF 1800, 233

the men themselves, enclosing them m a network of
delusion, from which they cannot deliver themselves,
so as to see the real facts of the case, and the attitude
which they are adopting to the forces at work about
them. The federalists became stubborn and perti-
nacious in the attempt to force the dominion of their
ideas, and entirely lost touch with the public opinion
of the country, and set themselves in antagonism to
the genius of the people and the ruling forces of
American life. Their task had been to soften, mod-
erate, and school down to regular activity the wild
forces which had been set loose by the Revolution ;
but their faults now came to the surface. They had
not patience enough for the tremendous task they had
undertaken. They did not appreciate the fact that
all things must grow ; that the fruit cannot be obtained
in the ploughing season ; and that the grand results
at the end are only to be reached by a self-control
which will prevent headlong progress and premature
catastrophes. We have seen how much " energy "
was needed in the period of the Revolution and the
Confederation ; but the people had never appreciated
the need, and the attempt to force it on them had
made "energy" a synonym for tyranny and over-
government. That word had become a battle-cry to
rally one party, and to stir the other to rage. Here
is a grand lesson in the futility of aD those notions
which regard statesmen as moulding nations or im-
posing by their will the shape Which institutions shall
take, or the direction which civil affairs shaD follow.
It does not appear that Hamilton was a leader in

234 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

this extravagance and excess,* and Adams certainly
felt the mistake which was being made. His rage
was boundless when he came to realize the fact that
his administration had been wrecked by passing out
of his control into that of a set of men who had
committed it against his judgment.

As the election of 1800 approached, however,
Hamilton committed himself more and more to the
view of the extremists, if he had not sympathized with
it before. In June, 1800, he made a tour through
New England. He reported that the firstrclass
leaders there were "right," — that is, opposed to
Adams, — that the second-class leaders were too much
disposed to be wrong; and said that he had deter-
mined to inform them of the objections to Adams.^
In September he wrote to Wolcott : " The facts
hitherto known have very partially impaired the con-
fidence of the body of federalists in Mr. Adams,
who, for want of information, are disposed to regard
his opponents as factious men." * In the summer of
that year he prepared a pamphlet for circulation,
among the leading federalists, in secret. Burr, how-
ever, obtained a copy of it and published it.*
In this perverse and mischievous enterprise Hamilton
undertook to win a federal victory and defeat Adams

1 He thought the alien law deficient in guarantees of per-
sonal liberty (Works, viii. 526) ; wrote to Pickering in respect
to it, expressing anxiety as to how it would be executed : ** Let
us not be cruel or violent " (Ibid., 490) ; and again to Wolcott,
" Let us not establish a tyranny" (Ibid., 491).

2 Works, viii. 523, 555, 560.

8 Ibid., 563. 4 Ibid., 392.

THE ELECTION OF 1800. 235

at the same time, which he could only do by really
playing a trick upon the body of the party, who, as
he himself had just testified, were loyal to Adams.
The movement in which this pamphlet was the most
important incident was carried on by a diligent cor-
respondence between the leading federalists in differ-
ent States. It is astonishing that this correspondence
itself did not open their eyes to the folly of their
enterprise. It is evident that they had quite lost the
idea of " leading " a party by due measures, and had
come to the point of trying to command it by
authority.^ As soon as they proposed their plan to
any one who was not in the secret, they met with
wonder, doubt, protest, and difficulty.

The pamphlet is long, and must be construed as a
partisan attack on Adams. Hamilton begins with a
critical discussion of Adams's character and career,
and of his own personal relations to him, not omit-
ting incidents which are trivial and the interpretation
of which was at least questionable.^ He then comes
to the matters of the French mission, Fries*s rebel-
lion, and so on, in which he takes the extreme view
against Adams, although, as has been said above, we

1 Gibbs, ii. 366-430.

2 On page 397 the compliment of the French lady to Adams
is incorrectly quoted. It should read " de la nSgociation** She
did not tell him that he was " the Washington of negotiation,"
but the Washington oithe negotiation, — namely, that of 1782.
(Adams, iii. 339.) As regards the extravagance of the com-
pliment and Adams's vanity, as manifested in the way in which
he took it, the difference is essential. The error is in the ori-
ginal pamphlet of 1800.

236 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

have not evidence that he shared that view at the
time when the events occurred. He says: "Much
is it to be deplored that we should have been precipi-
tated from this proud eminence without necessity,
without temptation. The later conduct of the Presi-
dent forms a painful contrast to his commencement.
Its effects have been directly the reverse. It has
sunk the tone of the public mind ; it has impaired
the confidence of the friends of the government in
the Executive Chief; it has distracted public opinion ;
it has unnerved the public counsels ; it has sown the
seeds of discord at home, and lowered the reputation
of the government abroad." The President's resolu-
tion to send another embassy to France was "the
groundwork of the false steps which have succeeded."
He blames Adams for not taking the advice of his
ministers. " A president is not bound to conform to
the advice of his ministers, he is even under no
positive injunction to ask or require it ; " but he ought
to do it, in order to make the place of a minister
influential and desirable. He shows great disap-
pointment at the disbandmen't of the army. He
explains that his visit to Trenton, which excited
Adams's suspicions and resentment,^ was innocent
and proper. He blames Adams for the pardon of
Fries, because it was necessary that an example
should be made, especially in the State of Pennsyl-
vania. Yet he does not advise that votes should be
withheld from Adams. His point here is not so ab-
surd as it has sometimes been represented. He did

1 Adams, ix. 299.

CATASTROPHE OF THE FEDERALISTS. 237

not argue against Adams, and then tell people to vote
for him. His point was, that all the votes of the East
should be given to Pinckney with Adams ; that none
should be thrown away, in order to secure to Adams
the first place ; but that if some opposition votes in
the South should be given to Pinckney, he ought to
have all those of New England, so that he would
come m first.^ He states his own reasons for writing
this letter as follows : " To promote this co-operation,
to defend my own character, to vindicate those
friends who* with myself have been unkindly aspersed,
are the inducements for writing this letter." He
recognizes the inexpediency of the enterprise in
which he is engaged, and expressly recognizes the
fact that " the body of federalists, for want of suffi-
cient knowledge of facts, are not convinced of the
expediency of relinquishing him ; " yet he says that
"to suppress truths the disclosure of which is so
interesting to the public welfare, as well as to the
vindication of my friends and myself, did not appear
to me justifiable."

The gravamen of this opposition to Adams rested
chiefly, therefore, on the embassy to France. In the
retrospect it seems clear that Adams was right to send
the second embassy to France, just as Washington was
right to send Jay to England. A little concession and
conciliation overcame a difficulty, and set aside hos-

1 J. Q. Adams asserted that the object of the conspiracy
was to get the vote of South Carolina for Pinckney and
Jefferson, while holding all Northern federal votes to Pinckney
and Adams. (Federalism, 151.)

238 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

tilities, where the exaggerated federalist policy would
have cultivated a misunderstanding and nursed a con-
flict to large proportions. As to Fries, the sacrifice of
2t human life to make an example does not command
our approval ; and if it was possible, as it was, to treat
the rebellion with neglect and dismiss the culprit, few
now would be found to say that it was not right to
do it.

Adams wrote a review of this pamphlet in 1809.*
It precipitated the catastrophe of the federal party.
On account of it, Hamilton lost the leadership. When
the election went into the House, and the federalists
entered into a plan to put Burr over Jefferson, he re-
monstrated and advised against it, but his influence
could not control. The federal party lost power and
disappeared. There was a coarse justice in the epi-
taph which an opponent proposed for it : —

" We were well ;
Would be better,
And here we are." ^

From this time Hamilton was on the outside of the
administration of public affairs. His policy of rigour
and vigour, and his too relentless methods of pursuing
it, although they had undoubtedly contributed to the
strengthening of civil order and discipline which was
imperatively needed, had not only produced a ran-
corous opposition, but had also broken up his own
party, and left him without direct influence on public
affairs.

It will be interesting to put together some of the

1 Adams, ix. 241. 2 Hamiltoniad, 52.

HIS LATEST VIEWS AND SENTIMENTS. 239

most pointed expressions which we possess from him
in the last four years of his Ufe.

In February, 1800, he obtained a glimpse of one
truth which set in clear light his greatest mistake.
"America, if she attains to greatness, must creep to
it." ^ " Grow " would have been better than " creep."
In March, 1800, he says : " I feel no despondency of
any sort. As to the country, it is too young and vigor-
ous to be quacked out of its political health ; and as to
m)rself, I feet that I stand on ground which sooner or
later will insure me a triumph over all my enemies." ^
In August he addressed a letter to Adams, men-
tioning reports that the latter had spoken of a
" British faction," and had named leading federalists,
especially Hamilton, as belonging to it. Hamilton
asked if this was true, and if so, what his grounds
were for such an_ assertion. Adams did not reply.
In October, Hamilton again addressed him, declar-
ing that any such report was " a base, wicked, and
cruel calumny." • He who reads many of the diaries
and letters of early statesmen is forced to ask. Who
were the evil-disposed men and wrong-doers? Each
man, in his writings, reveals a strong disposition to
do right, and to pursue an honourable and patriotic
policy, while he refers to some others, his opponents,
as ill disposed and dangerous. The true inference
is that there was no British faction, no men sold to
France, no subverters, evil plotters, or unpatriotic
men among all whose names stand high on the roll
of statesmen. All suggestion of that sort, by whom-

* Works, viii. 543. * Ibid • Ibid, 445, 564.

240 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

soever imported into the record, may be stricken out
as due only to the passing passion of party, and the
ephemeral ambition of individuals.

In December Hamilton expressed dislike of the
treaty with France, but thought it better to ratify it.^
In January, 1801, he wrote to Bayard that Jeffer-
son would not lower the executive office, would not
follow his theories against his popularity or interest,
would temporize and maintain what is ; that he was
not violent, and favoured France only for popularity.*
In that year he wrote a series of eighteen papers in
criticism of Jefferson's Message. He was especially
sarcastic against Jefferson for releasing an Algerine
pirate ship which had been captured, on account of
a doubt as to the right of seizing it.* He expressed
the opinion that the United States had experienced
evils from too large immigration.* He uttered the
sentiment "Our National Government; the rock of
our political salvation."* In February, 1802, he
wrote to G. Morris : " Mine is an odd destiny. Per-
haps no man in the United States has sacrificed or
done more for the present Constitution than myself;
and, contrary to all my anticipations of its fate, as
you know, from the very beginning, I am still labour-
ing to prop the frail and worthless fabric. Yet I have
the murmurs of its friends, no less than the curses of
its foes, for my reward. What can I do better than
withdraw from the scene ? Every day proves to me

1 Works, viii. 570. 2 ibid., 581.

2 Ibid., vii. 2CX). * Ibid., 242.

6 Ibid., 248.

HIS LATEST VIEWS AND SENTIMENTS. 241

more and more that this American world was not
made for me."^

In this passage he distinctly utters his own con-
sciousness of the discord between himself and the
political drift of the country. It would probably
have been too much to expect of human weakness
and fallibility that he should have been able to exert
those influences which we have traced in his career,
upon the faults of American public life, yet should
have been able to maintain sympathy with the in-
vincible forces which predominated in it, so that he
could co-operate with them.

Hamilton favoured the constitutional amendment
changing the mode of electing presidents.* The re-
peal of the Judiciary Act seemed to him so serious
that he wanted a conference of the leading federalists
as to the course to be pursued.* In April, 1802, he
wrote : " It has ever appeared to me a sound prin-
ciple to let the Federal Government rest as much
as possible on the shoulders of the people, and as
little as possible on those of the State legislatures." *
" Men are rather reasoning than reasonable animals,
for the most part governed by the impulse of pas-
sion. This is a truth well understood by our adver-
saries, who have practised upon it with no small
benefit to their cause. For at the very moment
they are eulogizing the reason of men, and profess-
ing to appeal only to that faculty, they are court-
ing the strongest and most active passion of the

1 Works, viii. 591. a Ibid., 592.

• Ibid., 593. * Ibid., 596.

242 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

human heart, vanity." i " In my opinion, the pres-
ent Constitution is the standard to which we are to
cling." He proposed to organize the Christian Con-
stitutional Society, to support the Christian reUgion
and the Constitution by means of pamphlets, and
concerted action to elect fit men.

In a letter to Timothy Pickering in 1803 he gave
a strikingly correct definition of a republican form of
government : * " The essential criteria of which are
that the principal organs.of the executive and legis-
lative departments be elected by the people, and hold
their offices by a responsible and temporary or de-
feasible tenure." • This definition shows that he had
analyzed this and cognate political notions with care,
and that when he criticised a republican form of
government, he knew what he meant. Did his op-
ponents know what he meant? Did not they suppose
that a republican form of government includes some-
thing about equality and majority rule? Already in
the convention of 1787, in answering the question
whether the Senate and Executive proposed by him
were republican, he had said : " Yes, if all the magis-
trates are appointed, and vacancies are filled by the
people, or by a process of election originating with
the people." *

^ Works, viii. 597.

2 His definition of liberty was less fortunate : " Its true sense
must be the enjoyment of the common privileges of subjects
under the same government." (Works, iii. 453 [1784].) On
that definition the Russians have liberty. Hamilton's defini-
tion, however, shows that he was striving to define liberty in
terms of constitutions and institutions.

^ Wojks, 607. * Ibid., i. 373.

HIS LATEST VIEWS AND SENTIMENTS. 243

April 20, 1804, he wrote to his brother-in-law: "I
say nothing on politics, with the course of which I am
too much disgusted to give myself any future concern
about them." ^ On the day before the duel he wrote
a very short letter, the last which he ever wrote ex-
cept the farewell to his wife, which may be regarded
as his political testament. " I have had on hand for
some time a long letter to you [Sedgwick] explaining
my view of the course and tendency of our politics,
and my intention as to my own future conduct. . . .
I will here express but one sentiment, which is, that
dismemberment of our empire will be a clear sacrifice,
of great positive disadvantages, without any counter-
balancing good, administering no relief to our real
disease, which is democracy, the poison of which, by
a subdivision, will only be the more concentrated in
each part and consequently the more virulent." ^ His
last utterance, therefore, was one of anxiety for the
Union; and the Union to his mind was valuable as
putting constitutional restraint upon those features of
democracy which were always present to his mind
when he used the term, and which we have suffi-
ciently indicated throughout the course of this work,
as presenting great social and political dangers in his
time.

In connection with the controversy which arose be-
tween J. Q. Adams and the sons of the great federal-
ists in 1828, a statement was made by Plumer that he
was informed by Tracy, at the time, that Hamilton
had agreed to attend a meeting of federalists in Bos-
1 Works, viii. 615. 2 Ibid.

244 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

ton in the autumn of 1804.* The meeting was un-
derstood to be intended " to recommend the measures
necessary to form a s}rstem of government for the
Northern States." The death of Hamilton prevented
it from taking place.* King told J. Q. Adams, in
1804, that Hamilton entirely disapproved of the pro-
ject.* His last letter may be understood to have
imexpressed reference to this project. He left his
last word against any disunion enterprise at that
meeting.*

Hamilton never obtained a conception of a gov-
ernmental system, under a democratic republican
form, such as the United States has developed in the
nineteenth century out of the antagonism of Hamil-
tonian and Jeffersonian notions, without the absolute
predominance of either, under the social and econo-
mic conditions of the country ; which, in his time, no
one had ever conceived of, and which Mr. Bancroft
has described, rhetorically but correctly, as follows :
" As the sea is made up of drops, American society is
composed of separate, free, and constantly moving
atoms, ever in reciprocal action, advancing, receding,
crossing, struggling againit each other and with each
other, so that the institutions and laws of the country

1 Plumer's Plumer, 298. 2 Federalism, 145.

« Ibid., 148.

* J. Q. Adams mentions a letter of J. R. Van Rensselaer
which was shown to him in a newspaper in 1829, " to rescue
Hamilton's reputation from having participated in the disunion
project of 1804. But it rivets upon him the passion for being
at the head of an army, and his presentiment that he should be
killed by Burr." (Diary, viii. 115.)

HIS LATEST VIEWS AND SENTIMENTS. 245

rise out of the masses of individual thought, which,
like the waters of the ocean, are rolling evermore." ^

The growing density of population, the greater ac-
tivity of social life, the greater strain of the struggle
for existence, the greater wealth, the higher intel-
lectual activity, the drill and discipline of a more
highly developed industrial organization, the quickened
ambition of all classes for individual success and hap-
piness, the universal dissemination of ideas by litera-
ture, producing, as it were, a greater knowledge of
the world, an indescribable sense of the limits within
which all things must be had and enjoyed, and per-
haps also the solemn experience of the Civil War,
have given to the American people the discipline
which they needed in Hamilton's time, and which he
hoped to enforce by the devices of a statesman, and
by institutions arbitrarily invented and enforced against
the genius and temper of the people.

^ Constitution, ii« 324.

246 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

CHAPTER XVII.

THE ANTAGONISM OF HAMILTON AND BURR ; THE DUEL j
HAMILTON'S FUNERAL; COMMENl-S ON THE DUEL
AND DUELLING; COMMENTS OF FRIEND AND FOE
ON HAMILTON'S CAREER.

From 1800 to 1804 the causes which were to bring
about a collision between Hamilton and Burr marched
on with the precision of a classical tragedy. Already
in 1792 Hamilton described Burr in a letter as moved
by unprincipled ambition, bold, intriguing, and in debt.
** He is for or against nothing, but as it suits his ambi-
tion." * He called him "an embryo Caesar, if we have
one." A little later in the same year he wrote to a mem-
ber of Congress : " My opinion of Mr. Burr is yet to
form ; but according to the present state of it, he is a
man whose only political principle is to mount at all
events to the highest legal honours of the nation, and as
much further as circumstances will carry him." ^ In
1 800, writing to Wolcott against the support of Burr by
the federalists, he calls Burr a Catiline ; is pained at
the idea of his elevation by the federalists, who will be-
come responsible for him. He will use the rogues of
all parties. He repeated these ideas very many times in
writing to public men in that year.^ He charged Burr

1 Works, viii. 283. 2 ibid., 289.

3 Ibid., 565 et seq.

ANTAGONISM WITH BURR. 247

with having talked "perfect Godwinism," — which,
by the way, is a revelation of what Hamilton meant
by the republicanism in which he had no confidence.
It was the type of republicanism advocated by God-
win and his followers.* " With great apparent cold-
ness, he is the most sanguine man in the world. He
thinks everything possible to adventure and persever-
ance ; and though I believe he will fail, I think it
almost certain he will attempt usurpation, and the
attempt will involve great mischief."

In 1804 Burr sought federalist aid against the
regular democratic nominee, in order to become
Governor of New York. Hamilton supported his
opponent. The federalists were divided; Hamilton
having drawn as many of them as he could away
from Burr, by declaring that Burr was a democrat,
and would go against all their principles.*

It is a wonder that none of these clear and explicit
statements of opinion about Burr ever came to the
latter's hands. He could not fail to learn of Hamil-
ton's efforts to enlighten people on what he con-
sidered Burr's true character. As Burr was ambitious
and Hamilton persisted in attempts to thwart him by
un^vourable reports of his public and private char-
acter, it was certain that they must come in collision.
If Burr was the man Hamilton said that he was, the
two men, both acknowledging the code, could not
move in the same political arena without a duel sooner
or later. The report of which Burr demanded an

\ Works, viii. 583.
2 Republic, vii 770.

248 ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

explanation from Hamilton was only a vague reference
to the fact that Hamilton had expressed some " des-
picable opinion *' of Burr. This Hamilton could
neither confess nor deny.

The practice of duelling at the time amounted to a
great public vice. The French minister, Gerard, in
1779, spoke with astonishment of the rage for duel-
ling. Eight or nine had taken place in a few weeks,
all bloodless.^ In 1801 Hamilton's oldest son, Philip,
not quite twenty years old, was shot in a duel about a
quarrel at a theatre. The party newspapers abused
each other over it and about it.^ Coleman, the editor
of the " New York Evening Post," tried to frown down
duelling; but in 1803 he was forced into a duel with
Thompson, in which the latter was killed.*

In his farewell to his wife Hamilton wrote that he
would have avoided the duel if he could, " without
sacrifices which would have rendered me unworthy of
your esteem." * He left a paper in which he stated
his reasons for fighting, against which moral, religious,
family, and business reasons were as strong as possi-
ble. His apology is : " My relative situation, as well
in public as private, enforcing all the considerations
which constitute what men of the world denominate
honour, imposed on me, as I thought, a peculiar ne-
cessity not to decline the call. The ability to be in
future useful, whether in resisting mischief or effecting
good, in those crises of our public affairs which seem
likely to happen, would probably be inseparable from

1 Durand, 187. « Hist. Mag., Oct., 1867.

2 Hudson, Journalism, 218. * Works, viii. 629.

THE DUEL. 249

a conformity with public prejudice in this particular." ^
If we understand the sentiment of that time aright, a
refusal on his part would have been the end of his
usefulness in politics. ^

J. Q.Adams, in 1828, construed Hamilton's reasons
for fighting Burr as " ambition ; " that Hamilton, an-
ticipating civil strife, must not tarnish his military
honour, lest he should be unable to share in that strife
by military command. " I would hope," wrote Adams,
" and may not disbelieve, that Mr. Hamilton's attach-
ment to the Union was of that stubborn, inflexible
character which under no circumstances would have
foimd him arrayed in arms against it. But in the
events of Mr. Hamilton's life a comparison of his con-
duct with his opinions, in more than one instance, ex-
hibits him in that class of human characters whose sense
of rectitude itself is swayed by the impulses of the
heart, and the purity of whose virtue is tempered by
the baser metal of the ruling passion. This conflict
between the influence of the sensitive and the reason-
ing faculty was perhaps never more strikingly exem-
plified than in the catastrophe which terminated his
life, and in the picture of his soul unveiled by this
posthumous paper." •

It will be perceived that this judgment turns upon
the demonstration that Hamilton fought lest he should

1 Republic, vii. 818.

^ On the public opinion of the time about duelling, see the
" American Register " for 1807, part ii. 85, where it is asserted
that if Hamilton had killed Burr, he would have suffered no
condemnation.

• Federalism, 170

2SO ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

lose chances to gratify his ambition. The demonstra-
tion is not conclusive. If a man fights that he may
not lose a chance to serve his country in crises which
he foresees, it is not self-evident that his motive is
ambition. He may be sacrificing his conscientious
opinions to the highest patriotism, not to ambition.
While such alternative is open, the last part of Adams's
judgment appears censorious and affectedly high.
* Hamilton's faults in public afiairs were lack of policy,
/ too littie willingness to temporize and yield to cir-
cumstances, excess of frankness, and too great wil-
lingness to force a direct issue. If the fauldessness
of his rectitude and moral consistency was called in
question, it would be necessary to consider the evi-
dence that when he swerved it was from a base
motive. The duel does not furnish that evidence.

He died on the 12th of July, 1804. Gouvemeur
Morris delivered a brief address at the funeral, on a
platform in the portico of Trinity Church, four of
Hamilton's sons being on the platform, — the oldest
sixteen years of age, the youngest about six. Morris
said : " Hamilton disdained concealment. Knowing
the purity of his heart, he bore it, as it were, in his
hand, exposing to every passenger its inmost recesses.
The generous indiscretion subjected him to censure
from misrepresentation. His speculative opinions
were treated as deliberate designs." ^

Hamilton left his family really unprovided for. His
investments were chiefly unimproved land in western

1 Notes to the Hamiltoniad, 71, where the whole oration is
given.

COMMENTS OF FRIEND AND FOE. 251

NewYork.^ His debts were $55,000. A subscrip-
tion was made by his friends. A number of leading
federalists at Boston had, a few years before, bought
lands in Pennsylvania, owned by Pickering, as a mode
of relieving him of the investment and setting him
free to take office. They now transferred these
lands to Hamilton's executors for the benefit of his
family.*

We hesitate whether it is proper, for the purpose of
showing the party spirit which prevailed in the public
life of the time, to quote here the disgraceful com-
ments which were published even about his funeral ;
but as we desire to quote some of the eulogistic judg-
ments which have been passed upon his character and
career, it seems necessary to include also comments
of another character.

Paine published a review of Morris's funeral oration,
in which he carped at the grammar and rhetoric of
it, and gratified a venomous dislike of Morris.* The
Hamiltoniad, without being scurrilous, is indecent,
Considering the fact that Hamilton was dead, and the
mode in which he died. It shows the bitter and in-
tense feeling about monarchy and aristocracy. It is
not stated who wrote the articles given in the notes,
but they appear to be from other writings of the
author of the poem. "We have solid evidence to
believe that Mr. Hamilton wished to introduce an
established church in the United States, and so inter-

^ On the general topic of these land investments at that
time, see the ** Life of Robert Morris."
* Lodge's Cabot, 304. * Hamiltoniad, Notes, 74.

25a ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

twine it with the government as to form that odious
monster in confederation, called the Church and State
interest." ^ The evidence is that Hamilton took the
communion from the Bishop of New York before his
death. The writer goes on to give his opinion of
bishops, and thinks that this fact proves that Hamilton
carried veneration for aristocracy "to the mortal
bourne."

There are but two or three places in his works
where Hamilton speaks personally of himself. In a
letter to Laurens, in 1779, he declared himself " cold
in my professions, warm in my friendships," and goes
on to profess very warm affection for Laurens. He
makes a playful sketch of the wife he wants, and then
describes himself. He mentions his small size and
his big nose. The banter is not very well done,
and seems out of character. He becomes tired and
ashamed of it at the end.^ Writing to Knox, in
1 799, he said : " My heart has always been the
master of my judgment." •

Of the opinions of Hamilton by his enemies, we
may note the following : Callender called him Calig-
ula,* and Alva,^ on account of a story which he often
repeated, that Hamilton regretted that the insurgents
did not burn Pittsburg in 1794. ** In the convention
of 1787 [Hamilton] and some other conspirators had
planned the foundation of American monarchy. A
design so hateful should have debarred him from the

1 Hamiltoniad, Notes, 57. 2 Works, vii. 585.

* Works, viii. 531. * Prospect, 36.

* History of 1796, 292.

COMMENTS OF FRIEND AND FOE. 253

confidence of the new government. He is the first
and only favourite whom General Washington ever had.
He became instantly dictator of the federal adminis-
tration. On every question before Congress he van-
quished the Virginian representatives. . . . For the
sake of raising a standing army as the first step in the
ladder of despotism, he wantonly provoked the war
with the northwestern savages. To support it he
abstracted from the treasury, without permission from
Congress, and in contempt of the Constitution, some
hundred thousands of dollars. . . . Profligate and in-
solent in his private manners, but plausible and delib-
erate in his financial projects, an aristocrat from the
dictates of his understanding as well as from the
views of his ambition, this man had then obtained,
and still seems to possess [1800], an almost absolute
ascendency over our public counsels." *

John Adams said that Hamilton was the greatest
organist who ever played on the caucus,' and de-
clared that he was the greatest intriguer in the coun-
try.' He also quotes a letter of Stoddert, who did
not Tate Hamilton's discretion or the solidity of his
judgment very high, and thought it a harm to the
federal party that his opinions were deemed so
^' oracular." * Maclay mentions him to say : " Ham-
ilton has a very boyish, giddy manner."*

After his death, nobody published anything in
eulogy of him which was more distinctly to the point

1 Prospect, 106. * Adams, vi. 543,

' Adams, z. 124. * Ibid., ix. 301.

• Maclay, 238 (1790).

254 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

than Cheetham, who was a political opponent, but
being a Jeffersonian, was at the time perhaps more
hostile to Burr than to Hamilton. " He wha for a
moment reflects that out of the Revolutionary contest,
that chaos of clashing elements, arose a world of free-
dom, cannot but venerate the memory of those who,
as it were, created it. In this most glorious, most
useful, most splendid of earthly scenes, Hamilton per-
formed a conspicuous, shall I not say, a disinterested,
a patriotic part. * Scarcely arrived at the gristie of
manhood,' glowing with patriotic fire, with military
ardor, he joined the creative phalanx, and signalized
himself by constancy, by perseverance, and by valour.
• . . His Revolutionary services entitle him to our
affection, and will endear his memory to all who are
sincerely attached to our independence." *

When Hamilton resigned, Washington wrote to
him : ^ *' In every relation which you have borne to
me I have found that my confidence in your talents,
exertions, and integrity has been well placed. I the
more freely tender this testimony of my approbation
because I speak from opportunities of information
which cannot deceive me and which furnish satis-
factory proof of your title to public regard."

On the relations of Washington and Hamilton,
Bancroft writes : " While the weightiest testimony
that has ever been borne to the ability of Hamilton
is by Washington, there never fell from Hamilton's
pen during the lifetime of the latter one line which
adequately expressed the character of Washington,

1 Coleman, 64. ^ Washington, xi. 16.

COMMENTS ON HIS CAREER, 255

or gave proof that he had had the patiyce to verify
the immense power that lay concealed beneath the
uniform moderation and method of his chief." ^

There is some ground for the blame on Hamilton
implied in this passage, but it seems to be exag-
gerated. In reply to Washington's letter above,
Hamilton wrote : " Whatsoever may be my destina-
tion hereafter, I entreat you to be persuaded (not
the less from my having been sparing in professions)
that I shall never cease to render a just tribute to
those eminent and excellent qualities which have
been already productive of so many blessings to
your country ; that you will always have my fervent
wishes for your public and personal felicity, and that
it will 'be my pride to cultivate a continuance of that
esteem, regard, and friendship of which you do me
Jhe honour to assure me." ^

The evidence seems conclusive of good under-
standing and high esteem between the two men
after 1790. Hamilton adopted the habit of signing
himself, in writing to Washington, "With sincere
respect and affectionate attachment," which is such
a selected expression that it must be taken as signi-
fying more than any of the ordinary formulas. Still
it is true that the record contains no evidence that
he appreciated Washington. The things which he
said about him were rather expressions of the use-
ftdness of Washington to himself. When Washington
died he wrote : " He was an ^Egis very essential to
me ; " • and to Mrs. Washington : " There can be

1 History, x. 410. ^ Works, viii. 335. ' Ibid., 538.

2S6 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

few who equally with me participate in the loss you
deplore. In expressing this sentiment, I may, with-
out impropriety, allude to the numerous and distin-
guished marks of confidence and friendship of which
you have yourself been a witness; but I cannot say
in how many ways the continuance of that confi-
dence and friendship was necessary to me in future
relations." ^

Gouvemeur Morris wrote extended comments on
Hamilton's career and character in his diary : '* One
marked trait of his character was the pertinacious
adherence to opinions he had once formed. . . .
The extent of the United States led him to fear a
defect of national sentiment. . . . He heartily as-
sented, nevertheless, to the Constitution, because he
considered it as a band which might hold us together
for some time, and he knew that national sientiment
is the offspring of national existence. . . . He was of
that kind of man which may most safely be trusted,
for he was more covetous of glory than of wealth or
power; but he was of all men the most indiscreet.
He knew that a limited monarchy, even if estab-
lished, could not preserve itself in this country. . . .
He very well knew that no monarchy whatever could
be established but by the mob. . . . He never failed
on every occasion to advocate the excellence of, and
avow his attachment to, monarchical government. . . .
He was indiscreet, vain, and opinionated. . . . Our
poor friend Hamilton bestrode his hobby to the great
annoyance of his friends, and not without injury to

^ Works, viii. 541.

COMMENTS ON HIS CAREER. 257

himself. More a theoretic than a practical man, he
was not sufficiently convinced that a system may be
good in itself, and bad in relation to particular
circumstances." ^

J. Q. Adams said of him that " the characteristics
of his mind and conduct" were that they were "in-
direct and hesitating,"* — an exceedingly incorrect
judgment, unless we have entirely failed to understand
the record.

Madison, having outlived the fiercer passions of
their early warfare, wrote of him, in 1831 : "That he
possessed intellectual powers of the first order, and
the moral qualifications of integrity and honour in a
captivating degree, has been decreed to him by a
suffrage now universal. If his theory of government
deviated from the republican standard, he had the
candour to avow it, and the greater merit of co-opera-
ting faithfully in maturing and supporting a system
which was not his choice." * The Due de Liancourt
recorded of him that he had firmness and boldness
of character, with fine manners. His disinterested-
ness is universally admitted. He had used none of
the chances which his position in the treasury gave
him. His professional charges were moderate. " Mr.
Hamilton is one of the first men of America, at least
of those whom I have yet seen. He has breadth of

^ Morris's Morris, ii. 456, 474, 523. He said so, however.
" A government must be fitted to a nation as much as a coat
to the individual ; and consequently, what may be good at
Philadelphia may be bad at Paris, and ridiculous at Petersburg."
(To Lafayette, 1799; Works, viii. 522.)

* Diary, ix. 350 » Madison's Letters, iv. 176.

258 ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

mind, and even genius, clearness in his ideas, facility
in their expression, information on all points, cheer-
fiilness, excellence of character, and much amiability.
I believe that even this eulogy is not adequate to his
merit." ^

Sullivan writes of him : * " He was imder middle
size, thin in person, but remarkably erect and digni-
fied in his deportment. His hair was turned back
from his forehead, powdered, and collected in a club
behind, ^is complexion was exceedingly fsui, and
varjdng from this only by the almost feminine rosi-
ness of his cheeks. His might be considered, as to
figure, and colour, an uncommonly handsome face.
When at rest, it had rather a severe and thoughtful
expression, but when engaged in conversation, it
easily assumed an attractive smile. When he entered
a room it was apparent, from the respectful attention
of the company, that he was a distinguished person.
His appearance and deportment accorded with the
dignified distinction to which he had attained in pub-
lic estimation. . . . The eloquence of Hamilton was
persuasive and commanding, the more so as he had
no guide but the impulse of a great and rich mind,
he having had little opportunity to be trained at the
bar or in popular assemblies. Those who could speak
of his manner from the best opportunities to observe
him in public and private, concurred in pronouncing
him to be a frank, amiable, high-minded, open-hearted
gentleman. He was capable of inspiring the most af-

1 Liancourt, iii. 260 ; vii. 149.

2 Public Men, 260.

COMMENTS ON HIS CAREER. 259

fectionate attachment, but he could make those whom
he opposed fear and hate him cordially."

Bancroft ^ sums up his judgment upon Hamilton,
that he was fond of authority ; had creative power ;
had in his nature nothing mean or low ; was disinter-
ested ; had a somewhat mean opinion of his fellow-
men, therefore lacked sympathy with the masses and
was unfit to lead a party. He thinks that he never
understood or appreciated Washington. "He had
a good heart, but with it the pride and the natural
arrogance of youth, combined with an almost over-
weening consciousness of his powers, so that he was
ready to find fault with the administration of others,
and to believe that things might have gone better if
the dh^ection had rested with himself. Bold in the
avowal of his own opinions, he was fearless to pro-
voke, and prompt to combat opposition. It was not
his habit to repine over lost opportunities. His na-
ture inclined him rather to prevent what seemed to
him coming evils by timely action."

The previous writer who has most nearly adopted
that view of the key to Hamilton's career which is
presented in this book is Hildreth : * " Much less of
a scholar or a speculatist than either Jefferson or
Adams, but a very sagacious observer of mankind,
and possessed of practical talents of the highest
order, Hamilton's theory of government seems to
have been almost entirely founded on what had
passed under his own observation during the war
of the Revolution and subsequently, previous to the

1 History, x. 409. • ^ History, iv. 296.

26o ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

adoption of the new Constitution. As Washington's
aide-de-camp, and as a member of the Continental
Congress after the peace, he had become very
strongly impressed with the. impossibility of duly
providing for the public good, especially in times of
war and danger, except by a government invested
with ample powers, and possessing means for putting
those powers into vigorous exercise."

LIST OF AUTHORITIES.

[Full titles of books referred to in this volume, in the alphabetical order ol
the short designations by which they have been cited.]

Adams : Works of John Adams, with Life and Notes by Charles
Frands Adams. Boston, 1856.

Adams to his Wife : Letters of John Adams addressed to his
Wife; edited by Charles Francis Adams. 2 vols. Boston, 184 1.

J. Q. Aj)Ams's Diary : Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, comprising
Portions of his Diary from 1795 ^^ '^4^ i ^^ed by Charles Frands
Adams. 12 vols. Philadelphia, 1874.

Adams's Federalism: Documents relating to New England Fed-
eralism, 1800-1815 ; edited by Henry Adams. Boston, 1877.

Almon*s Remembrancer: The Remembrancer; or, Impartial Re-
pository of Public Events. J. Almon: London. Period of tiie
Revolution.

Amer. Arch.: American Archives; published by M. St. C. Clarke
and Peter Force. 4th and 5th series. 9 vols. Washington, 1837-

1853-
Amer. Register : The American R^^ter ; or. General Repository

of History, Politics, and Sdence, 1807-18 14. Philadelphia.
L'AMi DES HOMMES : oo, Tfiut^ dfi U population. [V. R. Mirabeau.]

Avignon, 1 756-1 758.
Anbursy : Journal d*un Voyage fait dans I'int^rieur de 1* Am^rique

septentrionale. 2 vols. [Thomas Anborey.] Paris, 1793. P>'ench

version ; original in EngUsh.
Annals op Cong. : Debates and Proceedings of Congress, from 1789

to 1824. Washington, 1834-1856.
Balch, Penn. Letters: Letters and Papers relating duefly to

the Provincial History of Pennsylvania, with some Notices of the

Writers. [Thomas Balch.] Privately printed Philadelphia, 1855.
Bancroft : History of the United States. 10 vols. Boston, 1841-

1874.

262 LIST OF AUTHORITIES.

Bancroft's Constitution : History of the Fonnatioa of the Con-
stitution of the United States of America ; by George Bancroft. 2
vols. New York, 1882.

Bentham : The Works of Jeremy Bentham ; edited by John Bow-
ring. Edinburgh, 1843.

Bingham : A Letter from an American, etc., to a Member of Parlia-
ment on the Subject of the Restraining Proclamation, etc. [William
Bingham.] Philadelphia, 1784.

Binney : An Inquiry into the Formation of Washington's Farewell
Address ; by Horace Binney. Philadelphia, 1859.

Bland Papers : The, being a Selection from the MSS. of Col. Tfae-
odorich Bland, Jr. ; edited by C. Campbell. 2 vols. Petersburg, Va.,
1840.

Callender's History : The History of the United States for 1796 ;
by J. T. Callender. Philadelphia, 1797. See Prospect.

Cavendish : Debates of the House of Commons in the Year 1774, on
the Quebec Act; by Sir H. Cavendish. London, 1839.

Caruthers: Revolutionary Incidents and Sketches of Character,
chiefly in the "Old North State ; " by the Rev. E. W. Caruthers, D.D.
Philadelphia, 1854.

Chalmers: The Strength of Great Britain; by George Chalmers.
London, 1804.

Cheetham's Narrative : A Narrative of the Suppression, by
Col. Burr, of the History of the Administration of John Adams ;
written by John Wood. 2d ed. [James Cheetham.] New York,
1802.

Circourt : Histoire de 1* Action Commime de la France et de I'Am^-
rique pour Tind^pendance des ^tats Unis ; par Geo. Bancroft,
traduite et annot6e par le comte de Circourt. 3 vols. [Vol. III.
containing the Documents.] Paris, 1876.

The Correspondence of George III. : with Lord North; edited
by W. B. Donne. 2 vols. London, 1867.

Curtis's Constitution : Constitutional History of the United
States from their Declaration of Independence to the Close of their
Civil War ; by George P. Curtis. New York, 1889.

Dallas: Reports of Cases Ruled and Adjudged in the Courts of
Pennsylvania before and since the Revolution; by A. J. Dallas.
2d ed. Philadelphia, 1806.

Dawson : The Sons of Liberty in New York ; by Henry B. Dawson.
Not published, 1859.

Dawson : Westchester County, New York, during the Revolution ;
by H. B. Dawson. Morrisania, 1886.

Dickinson : Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania to the Inhabi*

LIST OF AUTHORITIES, 263

tants of the British Colonies. [John Dickinson.] Philadelphia,
1784. [First published in 1768.]

Dip. Corr. Rev. : The Diplomatic Correspondence of tiie Amer-
ican Revolution ; edited by Jared Sparks. Boston and New York,
1829.

Dip. Cork. U. S. : The Diplomatic Correspondence of the United
States of America from 1783 to 1789. 7 vols. Washington, 1833-
1834.

DONnn. : Histohre de la Participation de la France k P^tabUssonent
des l^tats Unis d* Am^iique ; par Henri Doniol. Paris, 1886.

Drayton : Memoirs of the American Revolution as relating to South
Carolina; by John Drayton, LL.D. 2 vols. Charleston, 1821.

DuRAND : New Materials for the History of the American Revolution;
by John Durand. New York, 1889.

FiNDLBY : History of the Insurrection in the Four Western Counties
of Pennsylvania in 1794; by William Findley. Philadelphia, 1796.

Folio State Papers : American State Papers, — Documents, Leg-
islative and Executive, of the Congress of the United States. Wash-
ington, 1859. Subdivisions : Finance, Indians, etc.

Franklin: The Works of Benjamin Franklin; edited by Jared
Sparks. Boston, 1836.

FuTHEY and Cope : History of Chester County, Pennsylvania ; by
J. S. Futhey and G. Cope. Philadelphia, 1881.

Gallatin's Writings : The Writings of Albert Gallatin ; edited by
Henry Adams. 3 vols. Philadelphia, 1879.

Galloway Examination: The Examination of Joseph Galloway
by a Committee of the House of Commons [1779] ; edited by Thomas
Balch. Printed for the '76 Society. Philadelphia, 1855.

GiBBs: Memoirs of the Administrations of Washington and John
Adams ; edited from the Papers of Oliver Wolcott, by George Gibbs.
2 vols. New York, 1846.

Gordon : History of the Rise, Progress, and Establishment of Inde-
pendence by the United States > by William Gordon. 4 vols. Lon-
don, 1788.

Graydon : Memoirs of his own Time, with Reminiscences of the

. Men and Events of the Revolution, by Alexander Graydon ; edited
by J. S. Littell. Philadelphia, 1846. [First published, 1811.]

Hamiltoniad : The Hamiltoniad ; by John Williams. [Anthony
Pasquin.] New York. Printed for the Hamilton Club, 1865.

Historical Magazine : The; edited by H. B. Dawson. Morrisania.

Hudson's Journalism : Journalism in the United States from 1690
to 1872 ; by Frederic Hudson. New York, 1873.

264 LIST OF AUTHORITIES,

Hutchinson : The History of the Province of Massachusetts Bay
from 1749 to 1774, by Thomas Hutchinson ; edited by John Hutch-
inson. London, 1828.

Johnson's Greene: Sketches of the Life and Correspondence of
Nathaniel Greene; by William Johnson. Charleston, \%i2,

Johnston's Jay : The Correspondence and Public Papers of John
Jay ; edited by H. P. Johnston, i vol. New York, 1890.

Jones's Letters : Letters of Joseph Jones of Virginia, — Depart-
ment of State ; edited by W. C. Ford. Washington, 1889.

JouRN. Cong.: The Journals of Congress, from Folwell's Press,
Philadelphia, i8oo.

Kalb : The Life of John Kalb ; by Friederich Kapp. New York,
1884.

Kemble : Kemble's Journal, — Collections of the New York Histori-
cal Society, 1883.

Kidder, The Boston Massacre: History of the Boston Massacre,
March 5, 1770; by Frederic Kidder. Albany, 1870.

Letters to Washington : CorresponJence of the Revolution, —
Letters to Washington; edited by Jared Sparks. Boston, 1853.

Lodge: Alexander Hamilton. Boston, 1882.

Lodge's Cabot : Life and Letters of George Cabot ; by Henry Cabot
Lodge. Boston, 1877.

Laurens Correspondence: in Materials for History; by Frank
Moore, ist series. New York, 1861.

Lauzun: M6moires du Due de Lauzun. Paris, 1862. BibHot. des
Mem. du i8me si&cle; par Barriere. Vol. 25.

Lee's Lee: Life of Richard H. Lee; by Richard H. Lee. 2 vols.
Philadelphia, 1825.

Lee's Southern War : Memoirs of the War in the Southern De-
partment of the United States ; by Henry Lee. 2 vols. Philadel-
phia, 1812.

Letters to R. Morris : in the Collections of the New York Histor-
ical Society for 1878.

LiANCOURT : Voyage dans les ]^tats Unis d'Am^rique fait en 1795,
1796, and 1797; par la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt. Paris, 1799.

Long Island Hist. Soc. : Memoirs of the Long Island Historical
Socioty, II. and III., — The Battle of Long Island. Brooklyn, 1869,
1870..

Maclay : Sketches of Debate m the First Senate of the United States,
1 789- 1 790- 1 79 1 ; by William Maclay. Hairisburg, 1880.

Madison's Letters: Letters and other Writings of James Madison.
4 vols. Philadelphia, 1865.

LIST OF AUTHORITIES. 265

Madison Papers : The Papers of James Madison ; edited by H. D.
Gilpin. 3 vols. Washington, 1840.

Marshall's Diary : Extracts from the Diary of Christopher Mar-
shall, kept in Philadelphia and Lancaster during tiie American Revo-
lution, 1774 to 178 1 ; edited by William Duane. Albany, 1877.

Massachusetts Papers : Papers relating to Public Events in
Massachusetts preceding the American Revolution. Printed for
the *76 Society. Philadelphia, 1856.

McMaster and Stone * Pennsylvania and the Federal Constitution,
1787-1788; by J. B. McMaster and F. D. Stone. Published for
subscribers by the Pennsylvania Historical Society, 1888.

Mentor : Mentor's Reply to Phocion. Philadelphia, 1784.

Monroe's View: A View of the Conduct of the Executive in the
Foreign Affairs of the United States, connected with the Mission to
the French Republic during the Years 1 794-1 795-1 796; by James
Monroe. Philadelphia, 1797.

Moore's Diary: Diary of the American Revolution; by Frank
Moore. 2 vols. New York, i860.

Morris's Morris: The Diary and Letters of Gouvemeur Morris;
edited by A. C. Morris. 2 vols. New York, 1888.

Onderdonk's Suffolk and Kings County : Revolutionary Inci-
dents of Suffolk and Kings Counties ; by H. Onderdonk, Jr. New
York, 1849.

Onderdonk's Queens Co. : Documents and Letters intended to
illustrate the Revolutionary Incidents of Queens County, by H,
Onderdonk, Jr. New York, 1846.

Onderdonk's Queens Co. in Olden Times: by Henry Onder-
donk, Jr. Jamaica, 1865.

Paul Jones: Memoirs of Paul Jones. 2 vols. [Mackenzie (?).]
London, 1843.

Penn. Arch. : Pennsylvania Archives. Philadelphia, 1854 , 2d series.
Harrisburg, 1876.

Pbnn. Packet: The Pennsylvania Packet, — three times a week,
period of the Revolution.

Plumer's Plumer : Lifeof William PI umer; byhisSon. Boston, 1856.

Poore's Constitutions : The Federal and State Constitutions,
Colonial Charters, and other Organic Laws of the United States ;
compiled by Ben Perley Poore. Washington, 1878.

Pownall Administration : The Administration of the British
Colonies ; by Thomas Pownall, late Governor of Massachusetts Bay
and South Carolina, and Lieutenant-Governor of New Jersey.
(5th ed.) 2 vols. London, 1774.

266 LIST OF AUTHORITIES,

Prior Documents : A Collection d Papers relative to the Dbpute
between Great Britain and America. London, 1775. [John Alnaon,
publisher.]

Proceedings of the Provincial Congress of New Jersey :
Trenton, 1879.

Proceedings of the Council of Safety of New Jersey:
Jersey City, 1872,

Proceedings of the Provincial Congress of New York : in
New York in the Revolution, State Archives, vol. i [This volume
contains hardly any of the records cited by Dawson, and referred to
in the present volume, concerning the treatment of tories and recon-
struction of the State government]

Prospect t The Prospect before the United States ; by J. T. Callen-
der. Vol. L Richmond, 1800.

Reed's Reed : Life and Correspondence of Joseph Reed ; by William
B. Reed. 2 vols. Philadelphia, 1847.

Report on Trade : between Great Britain and the United States,
of 1 791 ; edited by W. C. Ford. Brooklyn.

Repubuc I History of the Republic of the United States as traced in
the Writings of Alexander Hamilton and his Contemporaries. 7
vols. New York, 185 7-1 864.

Riedesel, Mad.! Letters and Memoirs relating to the War of
American Independence and the Capture of the German Troops at
Saratoga; by Madame de Riedesel. Translated from the German.
New York, 1827,

Riedesel, Gen. : Leben und Wirken des Gen. -Lieut. F. A. Riede-
sel J von M. von Eelking. 3 bde. Leipzig, 1856. [Eng. by W. L.
Stone. Albany, 1868.]

Sabine: The Loyalists of the American Revolution j by Lorenzo
Sabine. 2 vols. Boston, 1864.

Saint John de Crevecceur: Lettres d*un Cultivateur Am^ricain j
par M. Saint John de Crevecoeor. Paris, 1787.

Seabury (?) : The Congress Canvassed; or, An Examination Into the
Conduct of the Delegates at their Grand Convention held in Phila-
delphia, Sept. I, 1774, addressed to the Merchants of New York;
by A. W. Farmer. 1774. [Samuel Seabury (?).]

Seabury (?): Free Thoughts on the Proceedings of the Continental
Congress, held at Philadelphia, Sept 5, 1774 j by a Farmer. 1774.
[Samuel Seabury (?).]

Sec. Journ. Cong. : The Secret Journals of Acts and Proceedings of
Congress, 1775-1788. 4 vols. 1821.

Seybert: Statistical Annals, by Adam Seybert Philadelphia, 1818.

UST OF AUTHORITIES. 267

Sheffibld, Lord: Observations on the Commerce of the American

States ; by John, Lord Sheffield. 2d ed. London, 1784.
Sparks's Morris t The Life of Gouvemeur Morris, with Selections

from his Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers j by Jared Sparks.

3 vols. Boston, 1832.
Staples: Rhode Island in the Continental Congress, 1 765-1 790, by

W. R. Staples; edited by R. A. Guild. Providence, 1S70.
Sullivan's Public Men .* The Public Men of the Revolution ; by

W. Sullivan. Philadelphia, 1847.
Taylors An Inquiry into the Principles and Tendency of Certain

Public MeasureSb [John Taylor.] Philadelphia, 1794*
Thomson Papers ; The Papers of Charles Thomson, in the Collec-
tions of the New York Historical Society for 1878.
Turcot: A. R. J., (Euvres ; Daire et Dussard. 2 vols. Paris, 1844.
103 U. S. : Reports of Cases decided in the Supreme Court of the

United States.
Wait I State Papers and Public Documents of the United States.

12 vols. 2d ed. Boston, 181 7.
Walpole^s George III. : Memoirs of the Reign of George III., by

Horace Walpole \ edited by Sir Denis le Marchant. 2 vols. Fhila-

delphia, 1845.
Walpole*s Last Journals; Journal of the Rdgn of King George

the Third from 1 771 to 1783, by Horace Walpole; edited by Dr.

Doran. London, 1859.
Washington : The Writings of George Washington ; by Jared

Sparks. Z2 vols. Boston, 1837.
Webster, P. : Political Essays on the Nature and Operation of

Money, Public Finances, and other Subjecfs ; by PelatiaJi Webster.

Philadelphia, 1791.
Winsor t Narrative and Critical History of America ; edited by Justin

Winsor. 8 vols. Boston.
Works : The Works of Alexander Hamilton ; edited by H. C. Lodge.

9 vols, including the « FederaUst.»' New York, 1885-1886.
Wraxhall . Posthumous Memoirs of his own Time ; by Sir N. W.

Wraxhall, Bart. Philadelphia, 1836.

INDEX. ^

Academy, military, 125.

Accountability, financial, 85.

Adams, John, passim; character
of, 232, 235.

Adams, J. Q., 132, 134, 142, 179,
226, 237, 243, 244, 249, 250, 257.

Adams, S., 43.

Address to the People of Eng-
land, 6, 7.

Adet, P. A., 5, 221.

Affairs, milita^, 227, 229.

" Africa," the, 219.

Agitation, 11.

Agriculture, 148.

Albany, 104.

Algerine pirate, 240.

Algerines, 222.

Allen, William, 76.

Alva, Duke of, 252.

Ambassadors, 211.,

America, 34, 35, 42, 68, 181, 182,
204, 205, 239 ; destiny of, 33-
36; indifference to, 201-204.

American society, 244.

^ Ainericanus," 212.

Ames, Fisher, 218.

Anarclusm, 13, 52, 122, 135, 187,

' I94» «95i 208, 213.
Anburey, T., 97, xoo.
Andr^, J., 105.
Amiapolis, 129.
Anticipations, 71, 120.

Antifederalism, 130, 131, 134, 137,
142.

Appropriation, fixed, 161.

Arabian Nights, 70.

Aristocracy, 139, 170, 251, 252.

Army, 116, 117, 120, 123, 124,236,
253; as creditors, 116, 117; dis-
order in the, 92, 96, 97; the
French, 105; hostility to the,
116; mutiny in the, 121, 139;
organization of the, 227, 229;
proposed, 1794, 212, 222; pro-
visional, 1798, 225-229, 232.

Arnold, B., 105.

Arrall, Mrs., 75.

Artillery, 8 ; company, 8.

"Asia," the, 8.

Association, 41 ; the Continental,
51, 57, 58» 66-68.

Assumption, 154-160, 172, 186,
191; additional, 187.

Astor vs. Carver, 128.

Attainder, 126.

Authority, weakness of dvil, 41.

Bachb, R., 159, 199.
Balcarres, Lord, 100.
Balch, T., 15, 28.
Ball, proposed, 80.
Bancroft, G., 244, 254, 259.
Bank, 167-170; auxiliary, 114; of

270

INDEX,

England, no ; national, 109, 113,
146, 149, 162-165, 172, 186, 188;
of North America, 115; of Penn-
sylvania, no ; plan, 107, no.

Bank notes, 168.

Bankruptcy, 'JT, .

Barbadoes, 57.

Bargain, corrupt, 159.

Barter, 37, 192.

Bastard, i.

Bayard, James A., 240.

Bayard, John, 76.

Bentham, J., 28.

De Berdt, 43.

Bernard, Governor, 41.

Bills, protested, 121.

Bimetallism, 171.

Bingham, William, 203.

Bishops, 252.

Blustering, national, 217.

Book-keeping, 159, 168.

Books read in America, 44.

Boston, 56, 251; federalist meet-
ing at, 244 ; Massacre, 43 ; Port
Bill, 45.

Boundary, 126.

Bounties, 69, 173.

Bowdoin, J., 43.

Boycott, 39, 40, 57, 58, 65, 192.

Brandt, Colonel, 55.

Brandy wine, 107.

Bryan, Samuel, 135.

Burgoyne, General, 49, 105 ; his
campaign, 100.

Burke, E., 44.

Burr, A., 234, 238, 244-249, 254.

Cabinet, 26, 219, 236 ; the Amer-
ican, 210, 231 ; and the Presi-
dent, 232.

Cabot, G., 221.

Caesar, 246.

Caligula, 252,

Callender, J. T., i, 136, 142, 159,

190, 211, 214, 2i7| 222, 230, 252.
Cambidge, 49.
Campaign stories, 140.
Canada, 6, 7, 15, 18, 24, 55, 65, 86,

209.
Canadians, 6, 7, 18.
Cape Breton, 15.
Capital, 148-154, 167-169, I74t

180, 218.
Carlisle, 57.
Carrington, E., 186.
Carroll, J., 7.
Carrying trade, 18.
Carthage, 25.
Carting, 57.

Caruthers, £. W., 58, 60.
Catiline, 246.
Caucus, 253.

Cavendish, Sir H., 7, 24.
"Centmel," 136.
Century, the seventeenth, 21, 45 ;

the eighteenth, 3, 17, 19, 21, 180.
Chalmers, George, 32.
Charleston, 74.
Charters, 5, 6, 27, 28.
Chitelet, 32.
Cheetham, James, 254.
Chesapeake, 129.
Chester County, Penn., 96.
Child, Sir J., 21.
De Choin, 97,
Choiseul, 30, 32.
Church, an established, 251 ; and

State, 252.
Circulation, 113, 166.
City, the Federal, 142, 159,
Clark, Dr., 56.
Classes, 49, 50, 98, 99,
Clinton, George, 125.
Clownishness, 98.
Coffee, 37.
Coleman, W., 248.
College of New York, 3.

INDEX,

271

Colonial interests, 7, 21, 22, 23.

Colonies, 5, 11, 12, 21, 25, 33, 34,
200 ; cliques in, 48 ; common
sentiment of, 15 ; crown, 27 ;
exploitation of, 16, 25 ; value of,

i7> 3i> 32, 204.

Colonization, 12.

Colossus, 189.

Combination, 159.

Conmierce, 148, 173, 179, 203 (see
Trade) ; freedom of, 34, 181 (see
Trade^free) ; policy of America,
200-204, of England, 204, of
France, 200 ; regulation of, 129 ;
restriction of, 213, 219 (see As^
sociatiottf Non-import aiiotC),

Commission to Canada, 7.

Committee on Commerce, 85, 89,
no; of Foreign Affairs, 89; of
Investigation, 86 ; on Rights,
etc., 28.

Committees, Executive, 84 ; of
Safety, 51, 56, 58, 73-81, 197.

•* Common Sense,'* 82, 189.

Commons, House of, 26, 38.

Condorcet, 109.

Confederation, the, 138, 141, 15 5,
233; the Articles of, 82, 84, iii,
112, 114, n6, 122, 123, 130, 139.

Confiscation, 53, 59, 127.

Congress, the Continental, 4-142
passim, 260; b^ieged, 121; and
the Council of Pennsylvania, 121 ;
factions in, 88, 117; fear of the
States, 118; Journal of, 82;
leaves Philadelphia, 139 ; and
Massachusetts, 125 ; methods of,
86; power of, 112, 116, 123;
prejudices of, 84; respect for,
82; and Rhode Island, 122, 124.

Congress, the Federal, 140, 146,
^55» '95~253 passim ; treaty-
making power of, 217

Congress, the Stamp-act, 39, 65, 66.

Connecticut, 55 124, 192.
Consolidation, 132, 139, 158.
Constitution, the English, 5, 10,

27, 46, 47, nh n'^, 189-
Constitution of the United States,

131, 134-140, 142, 158, 208, 211,

217,226, 240, 242, 253, 256, 260;

amendments of the, 139, 241 ;

moulded by precedent, 141, 231 ;

ratification of the, 1 34-1 39*
Constitutionalists, 136.
Constitutionality, 139.
Constitutions, State, 13.
Continent, the, 15 ; the faith of, 72,

148.
Continental, in.
"Continentalist," 109, in.
Conventicles, social, 11.
Convention at Annapolis, 129; at

Boston, in; at Pittsburg, 192 ;

of 1787, 130-136, 252.
Conventions, price, in.
Comwallis, Lord, 107.
Corrupt cohort, 159, 188.
Corruption useful. 109, 131, 189.
"Cotton is King,'* 65.
Counter-revolution, 208.
Courier de 1' Europe, 206,
Court party, the, 158.
Court, the Spanish, 182.
Credit, 13, 79, 80, 115, 119, 120,

144, 157, 160, 166, 188, 191 ; and

capital, 149, 150.
Creditors, public, 117, 123.
Crisis, financial, 163.
Crown, the, 45.
Currency, Continental, 51, 70-73,

no, 151; forced circulation of,

78-80 ; refused, 78.

Dana, R., 201.
Darden, Amy, 94.
Dawson, H. B., 39, 60.

272

INDEX.

Deane, Silas, 91.

Debates, publidty of, 82, 83.

Debt, 169; the public, 124, 135,

i37i 138, 144-1561 158, 163, 164,
174, 188, 202, 207, 210 ; a bless-
ing, 149, 150, 159; payment of,
158-162; State, 154.

Debtor and creditor, 169.

Dd)tors, 40, 47, 48, 51.

Debts to Englishmen, refusal to
pay, 39» 40, 127, 213.

Delaware, 129.

Democracy, 132, 133, 243.

Depreciation, 72, 77, 151, 152.

Derivatives, 176.

Despatches, Colonial, 22.

Despotism, 253.

Diagnosis, political, 204.

Dickinson, John, 21, 129.

Diplomac}', 90.

Directory, the French, 222.

Discipline, 9, 197, 230, 238, 245;
lack of, 88, 91, 92, 93, 94, loi,
104.

Disintegration, social, 9, 13,42, 47,
48, 51, 56,60,95;

Disobedience, 93, 94.

District of Columbia, 42.

Disunion, 14, 137, 226, 230, 243,
244.

Doctrine, of resistance, 8, 10, 27,
28; economic, 19, 22.

Documents, Prior, 39.

Dollar, Spanish, 170; of the United
States, 171.

Dominion, sole, 25, 31.

Dorchester, Lord, 209.

Duane, James, 109, 112.

Duane, William, 136, 159.

Duel of Coleman and Thompson,
248 ; of Philip Hamilton, 248 ;
of Hamilton and Burr, 243, 247-
250 ; of John Laurens and Gen-
eral Lee, 105.

Dudling, 248.

Dunkirk, 31.

Dupont de Nemoors, 109.

Duties on imports, 37, 38, 114, 122,
145, 181-183 ; discriminating,
202, 209; on exports, 179.

Economists, French, 109.

Egyptians, 66.

Election, Presidential, 221 ; of

1800, 234-238.
Electors, 131.
Elizabeth, Queen, 177.
Embargo, 65.
Embezzlement, 94, loo.
Emigration, 7, 182.
Empire, 7, 9, 12, 22, 23, 28, 200-

204.
Encampment, 97.
"Energy," 8, 87-91, 111-115, 132,

137, 204, 225-228, 233.
Energy of Americans, 98.
England, passim ; attitude of, to

the United States, 203 ; expected

decline of, 205, 214, 220; hatred

of, 31, 205, 215, 218, 220.

Engrossers, 72.

Episcopate, American, 43.

Equivalence, law of, loi.

Essex, Lord, 22.

D'Estaing, 97.

Europe, 16, 17, 26, 33-35, 182,
202.

Exchange, 169.

Excise tax, 38, 156, 191-199; im-
moral, 195 ; unpopularity of, 38,
191.

Executive, 131, 133, 242.

Faction, British, 239.
Faith, national, 220; pledged, 71
148.

INDEX

273

Fallacies, financial, 1141 167.
Falmouth, 54.
Fanning, Colonel, 96.
Farmer, a Westchester, 4, 5.
"Farmer Refuted," 51, 109.
Fauchet, 219.
Federalism, 142, 193.
Federalist(s), 112, 223, 224, 232-

238, 243, 246, 247, 251, 253;

epitaph of, 238; faults of, 233.
" Federalist," the, ^Zy 109, 136,

138, 166.
Feimo»s *• Gazette," 189.
Fields, meeting in the, 4.
Finances, 116-118, 122.
Findley, William, 191-198.
Fisheries, 68, 126.
Fishkill, IT,
Fitz, Captain, 96.
Florida, 86, 209, 226.
Ford, Mr. Paul, 136.
Forestallers, 72, 'jt.
Fortifications, 125.
France, passim ; mission to, 221-

223, 235, 236; relations to the

United States, 207-213, 2x6, 219,

237; seeks revenge, 31.
Franklin, Benjamin, 15, 21, 27, 31,

381 59, 65, 83, 90, 91, 98, 109,

117, 118, 120, 126, x8i, 206.
Frederick the Great, 26, 27, 30, 31,

ICO.

Freebooters, 96.

Free ships, free goods, 219.

Freneau, 186, 188.

Fries, 229, 235, 236, 238.

Fund, 117, 166, 191.

Funding, 117, 145-154, 172, 186.

Gagb, General, 44.

Gallatin, A., 157-159, 197.
Galloway, J., 50.
Gates, General, 105.

Gee, J.,^i*

Genit, 5, 210, 211.

Georgia, 68, 122.

Gerard, 89, 126, 248.

Giles, W. B., 185, 186.

Gillon, Commodore, 93.

" Give and grant," 24.

Globe, the, 6, 17, 33.

Godwin, W., 247,

Godwinism, 247.

Gold and silver, 166, 170, 180.

Gordon, W., 74.

Government, arbitrary, 6; dislike
of splendid, 141; efficient, in,
114, 115, 117, 130, 133, 138, 260
(see Energy)\ Republican, 131,
242.

Grand, 118.

Graydon, A., 49, 51, 57, 60, 76,

93» 97, 98*
Greene, General, 50, 99, 119.

Grenville, George, 22, 26.

Grievances, 6, 7, 21, 22, 25, 44,

46, 50.

Half-truths, ii.

Hamilton, Alexander, affairs, 2,
251 ; ambition, 3, 244, 249, 250,
255; apologizes for zeal, 138,
for duel, 248; arrival in United
States, 4; artillery officer, 104;
aunt of, 3 ; autobiography of, 3,
252 ; browbeats accused, 198 ;
career, 8, dew to it, 103 ; char-
acter, 184, 250-260 ; charges
against, 185, 188, 253; death,
250; debts, 251; destiny, 240;
disgusted at politics, 243 ; dread
of, 189, 259; eloquence, 258;
family, 250, 251 ; faults and mis-
takes, 178, 184, 185, 190, 238,
239, 250 ; fearlessness of respon-
sibility, 228; filial affection, 2;

2 74

INDEX,

funeral, 250, 251 ; in 1800, 234-
239; industry, 227 ; investments,
250; and Jefferson, \^Of^^\^ 189}
190, 202; letters, i ; Lodge's, i;
loses leadership, 238 ; Louisiana,
views about, 209, 225, 226 ; man-
ners, 257, 258; masterfulness,
178; methods, 178, 184, 190,214,
227, 238 ; military services, 225-
229, 254 ; minister without port-
folio, 231; mother of, 3; motto
for foreign relations, 216 ; opin-
ions, 149, 150, 213, 227, criti-
cism of, 151; person, 252, 258;
plan for Union, 230; political
principles, 187, 193, 194, 228;
political testament, 243; quarrel
with Washington, 106; reading,
109, 178, 180 ; resignation, 186,
215; sons, 250 ; suspicion of, 229;
temper, 228; theories of com-
merce, 178, 179, 180, iSi ; theo-
ries of finance, 114; theories of
statesmanship, 178-180, 233,
239-244, 257, 259; theories of
taxes, 180, 181 ; vanity, 3 ; and
Washington, 106, 254; wife, 3,
107, 243, 248, 252 J writes for
newspapers, 138, 194, 212, 216.

Hamilton, James, 2.

Hamilton, J. C, 107.

Hamilton, Philip, 248.

Hamiltoniad, 238, 251.

Hamiltonism, 211.

Hancock, Mrs., So.

Hartford, 56.

Heard, Colonel, 58.

Henry, Patrick, 135.

Heresies, political, 133, 147.

Highland forts, 96.

Hildreth, R., 259.

History, the suppressed, 12S.

Holland, 16, 17, 32, 68, 202 ; bank-
ers in, 121.

Honour, national, 220.

Horse-race, 95.

House of Representatives, 238.

Howe, General, 78, 92.

Huddy, Captain, 54.

Hume, David, 109^ 131, 177.

Hunt, r., 56, 57, 75*

Hunt, Leigh, 57.

Hutchinson, Governor, 41, 74, 82.

Immigration, 240.
Impeachment, 217.
Impost, the five per cent, 122.
Impressment, 94, 95, 219.
Indebtedness, certificates of, 120.
Independence, 9, 12, 13, 22, 28, 29,

33» 34i 35. 5i» 53» S^i "5» i44f
148, 156, 183, 208; of foreign

influence, 218, 223.

^ Independent Gazetteer,*' 136.

Indians, 21.

Indolence, 98.

Inflation, 71.

Ingersoll, 41.

Inglis, Mrs., 128.

Inspection laws, 175.

Institutions, 13.

Instruments, negotiable, 168.

Interest of the rich, no, 156, 163.

Intervention, 5, 30-32.

Jacobinism, 6, I97,''2i9.

Jay, John, 4, 6, 90, 102, 135, 180,

182, 204, 205, 206, 214, 215,

216-221, 237.
Jealousies, 106, 116.
Jefferson, T,^ passim.
Jenkinson, Charles, 202.
Jobs, 146.
Jones, Joseph, 123,
Jones, Paul, 93.
Jubilee, Jewish, 146*

INDEX,

27S

Judges, disrespect to, 47.
Judiciary, 158 ; Act, 241.
Jurisdiction, 12, 17, 18, 27.

Kalb, J., 30, 31, 38, 85, 86, 93,

96, 97.
Kearsley, Dr., 56, 57, 75.
Kemble's Journal, 60.
Kidder, F., 43.
Kidnapping, 8.
King, the, 26, 27, 46 ; of England

(George III.), 26, 140, 204, 218;

of France, 33; of the United

States, 140.
King, Rufus, 218, 244.
Knox, General, 225, 252.
Ku Klux, 56.

Labour, dear, 173, 183.

Lafayette, 99, 106, 257.

Lakes, the, 6.

"L'Ami des Hommes," 25.

Lancaster, Penn., 58, 121.

Land, 114, 160, 182, 250; office,
145, 146.

Lands, Western, 28.

Laurens, Henry, 76, 86, 207.

Laurens, John, 68, 102, 105, 106,
115, 252.

Laurens correspondence, 58.

Lauzun, 99.

^^} 195! administration of, ar-
rested, 41 ; alien, 234 ; canon, 43 ;
constitutional, 139; English, 7:
feudal, 43 ; French, 6, 7 ; of na-
tions, 210; of nature, 6; study
of, 44.

Law, John, 109, no.

Law books, 44.

Lawlessness, 14, 42, 46, 50, 76, 195.

Laws, natural, 19.

Lawyers, 44, 45.

Laxness, 88-92, loi.

League, 132.

x.<€e, ^'y 43*

Lee, Gen. Charles, 94.

Lee, R. H., 22, 41, 42, 46, 78.

Lenity, 92, 94.

Letters seized, 75, 195.

Lexington, 69, 74.

Liancourt, de la Rochefoucauld-^

142, 198, 257.
Liberty, 131, 135, 208, 212, 213,

219, 224, 234, 242 ; declamation

about, 52, 84, 188.
Life, colonial, 9, 14.
Lincoln, General, 135.
Literature of resistance, 10.
Livingston, Edward, 217.
Livingston, Robert, 59, 201.
Loan, foreign, no, 113, 120, "166.
Loan-office certificates, 59.
Lodge, H. C, 1, 107, 147.
Logic of trade, 181- 183, 203.
Long Island, 54; battle of, 96;

Historical Society, 58.
Lords, House of, 132.
Loss by Revolution, 49.
Louis XVI., 212.
Louisiana, 209, 225, 226.
Loyalist. (See Tory,)
Loyalty, 53.
De la Luzerne, 87.

MacDuffib, George, 177.
Maclay, Wm., 145, 146, 158, 253.
Madison, James, 137, i85>i89, 201,

202, 221, 226, 257.
Madison Letters, 257.
Madison Papers, 130.
Maine, 136.
Manufactures, 33, 148, 181, 183;

Report on, 149, 160, 172-177,

185.
<'MaiceUus,** 189.

{

276

INDEX,

Maiket, 38, 63* 64, 72 ; a sole, 16,

25 ; Uie world's, 37.
Marshall, C, 58, 77-79, 95.
Martin, Luther, 134.
Martinique, 91.
Maryland, 129, 198.
Massachusetts, 22, 27, 34, 125, 191 ;

Assembly oif, 43, 82; Congress

of, 56.
Massacre, the Boston, 43 ; the

Paoli, 96; the Wyoming, 55, 60.
Maxims, political, 46.
McGirth, 96.

McHenry, J., 215, 225, 227.
Medical department, 100, loi.
Medium, insufficient, 151.
Melon, 109.
** Mentor," 166, 179.
Mercantilism, 19, 20, 32, 175, 180,

181.
Metals, 37 ; precious, 20.
Methods, social, 11.
Mifflin, Governor, 198.
Militia, 41, 99, 100, 132, 194, 197,

226, 227.
Mingo Creek Association, 197,
Ministry, 28.
Mint, 170-172.
Miranda, F., 226.
Mississippi, the, 6, 126.
Mob, 7, 8, 40, 41, 43, 46, 47, 51,

75, 121, 196, 197, 199, 216, 256.
Monarchism, 139, 140, 170, 187,

189,219, 229,251, 252,256.
Money, 37, 38, 42, 165-171, 192;

and wealth, 113.
Monmouth County, N. J., 96.
Monopolists, 72, 'j*^.
Monopoly, 24, 72, 170.
Monroe, James, 185, 186, 219 ;

his "View," 220.
Montesquieu, 109.
Montmorin, 201.
Moody, 96.

Moore*s IMary, 54-57.

Moore's Mount^n, 58.

Morris, Gouvemeur, i, 46, 70, 109,

116, 209, 24O1 250, 251, 255*

257.
Morris, Robert, 77, 82, 84, 85, 89,

loi, 107, 108, 1 13-124, 150, 166.
Morris, Roger, 128 ; Mrs., 128.
Morristown, 107.
Murray, W. V., 223.
Mutiny. (See Army,)

Napoleon, 223.

Nations, family of, 33.

Navigation Acts, 5, i8| 21, 21,
203.

Navy, 19, 125.

Neckar, 131.

Negroes, 205.

Neutral, neutrality, 208, 210, 21a,
214, 215, 218, 220, 223, 225.

Nevis, I.

Newcastle, Duke of, 22.

New England, 234, 237 ; hatred of,
98, 99.

New Hampshire, 137.

New Haven, 8, 41, 55.

New Jersey, 34, 54, 96, 129, 191;
Council of Safety, 60 j Provin-
cial Congress, 60.

News, transmission of, 74.

Newspapers, 8, 82, 149 ; party, 2485
war, 186, 188.

New York, 50, 55, 68, 124, 127,
129; antifederalism in, 137; bal-
ance against, 157 ; Bishop of,
252 ; convention of 1777, 57, 59;
convention of 1 788, 136 ; ** Even-
ing Post," 248 ; Governor of, 247;
Historical Society, 60; Legisla-
ture, 127; Provincial Congress,
8, 60, 70 ; Supreme Court of, 128 ;
Western, 251.

INDEX,

277

New York City, 137 ; meeting at,

216.
** Nocturnal societies," 76.
Non-consumption, 40, 66, 68.
Non-exportation, 66.
Non-importation, 4, 62, 66.
Non-intercourse, 213.
Non-interference, 172, 174, 177-

183.
North Carolina, 58, 68.
Nova Scotia, 86.
Nullification, 14.
Numerary, 109.
" Nursery for seamen," 19.

Offices in colonies, 48.

Ohio, the, 6.

Oliver, Judge, 47.

Onderdonk, H., 58, 60.

Opera bouffe, 140.

Opinion, popular, 199.

Organization, 9 ; industrial, 66, 167;

need of, 81, 87.
Osnaburgh, Bishop of, 140.
Outrages, 8, 54-61.

Paine, T., 251. (See Common

Settse.)
Paper money, 38, 69, 83, 114, 136,

150, 151, 166-168 ; effects of,

83, 85.
Papers, Massachusetts, 43.

Paris, 90, 257.

Parliament, 23, 24, 26-29, 44? 45»

46, 66, 204.
Particularism, 112.
Parties, in the United Stat^, 208,

210, 213-218, 223, 224, 230, 234,

237-240 J fate of, 232, 246-248,

251.
Patriotism, spurious, 61.
Peace, 116, 127; commission, 1782,

206 ; establishment, 142, 229 ;
federal justices of the, 230.

Peculation, 146.

Pedler, i, 26.

Peerage, 135.

Pennsylvania, 6, 49, 129, 140, 191-
193, 198, 236, 251 ; Assembly of,
27; Conunittee, 58; Constitu-
tion, 136 ; Council, 121 ; politics,
136 ; population, 39; taxes in, 38.

Period, the Nullification, 177; the
pre-Revolutionary, 9, 15, 194;
the Revolutionary, 15,

Perpetuities, 27.

Persecution, 253.

Peters's Reports, 128.

Petersburg, 257.

Philadelphia, 15, 42, 47, 57, 75, 121,
198, 257 ; meeting at, yj.

Philipse manor, 128.

** Phocion," 126, 166, 179.

Pickering, Timothy, i, 132, 215,
221, 234, 242, 251 ; Papers, i.

Pickets, 96.

Pinckney, Charles, 221, 223, 237.

Pitfall, 178.

Pitt, W., 23.

Pittsbiurg, 195, 252.

"Plain Truth," 189.

Plumer, William, 243.

Plundering, 94.

Poland, 26.

Police, 41, 196.

Policy, systems pf, 19.

Political Economy, 16, 20, 2b, 36.

Political philosophy, 36.

Politics, continental, 117.

Pontleroy, 31.

Poor in America, 182.

Popularity, 84, 115, 188, 240.

Portugal, 16, 17, 86.

Posterity, 1461 148, 186.

Power, dread of, 128.

Pownall, Thomas, 26, 28, 34, 183.

278

INDEX,

President of the United SUtes,

231, 232.
Prices, regulation of, 66.
Princeton, 121.
Principle, 29, 44, 45.
Principles, 10, 11.
Prior Documents, 23, 45.
Progress, 49.
Promotion, 8.
Proscription, 53, 54.
Protection, 177-183.
Protectionism, 174-177.
Public life, i.
Putnam, General, 78, 105.

Quaker, 59, 76.

Quebec Act, 6, 7.

Queens County, N. Y., 57, 58, 60.

Quincy, J., 45.

Raguet, Condy, 177,

Rebellion, 55, 60; Dorr's, 14;
Fries's, 229, 235, 238 *, Shays's,
14, 135, 136; the whiskey, 6,
14, 191-199.

Reciprocity, treaty of, 180.

Reconciliation, 51 ; plans of, 28.

Reed, Joseph, 28, 59, 93-95.

Religion, the Christian, 242 ; the
Roman Catholic, 6, 7.

Representation, 12, 24.

Republic, the, 229.

Republicanism, 140, 187, 242, 247.

Republicans, English, 45.

Repudiation, 13, 39, 40, 135, 145.

Requisitions, 157.

Resistance, doctrine of, 8, 10, 27,
28, 42, 45, 134, 191-199; fac-
tious, 43 ; methods of, 39. 41,
42, 191-199.

Restraining Act, 6, 7.

Retaliation, 54, 58, 62, 203, 220.

Revenue, 23, 25, 26, 118, 120;

plan of, 124, 127.
Revolt, significance of the, 26, 27,

30> 33» 35> 48-
Revolution, 53 ; the American, 13,

3I1 34i 36, 48~5i» 53, 60, 81,
136, 144, 1501 181, 200, 233, 254,
259 ; the French, 205, 207, 208 ;
social, 48.

Rhetoric, 11.

Rhode Island, 22, 122, 124, 179.

Rice, 68.

Riedesel, General, 100.

Riedesd, Madame, 49, 60.

Rights, of man, 52 ; of nations, 33;
natural, 5, 6, 11, 28, 45; per-
sonal, 56.

Riots. (See Mob.)

Rivalry of France and England, 24.

Rivington, 8, 55.

Roberdeau, 77,

Robinson, Mrs., 128.

Royalist. (See Tory.)

Rush, Benjamin, 78, 10 1.

Rush, Benjamin, 179. ,

Russians, 242.

Rutgers vs, Waddington, 128.

Sabine, 50, 128.

Saint John de Crevecoeur, 60.

Salt, 'j'j.

Satrapies, 26.

Schuyler, General, 106.

Scouts, 96, 97,

Sea, dominion of, 24, 25.

Seabury, Samuel, 4, 8.

Sears, Isaac, 8, 55.

Secession, 12, 14.

Sectional prejudice, 98.

Sedition, 82, 191-199.

Self-government, 6, 22, 46.

Selfishness, loi, 102.

Senate, 131, 242.

INDEX.

279

Sheffield, Lord, 68, 202, 203.

Shelbume, Lord, 28.

Sliippen, £., 15 ; Dr., loc, loi.

Ships, 18, 33.

Sinking fund, 160, 172, 184; fal-
lacy of, 161, 162.

Slavery, 169.

Slowness, 97.

Smith, Adam, 108, iSo.

Smith, William, 202.

Society, the Christian Constitu-
tional, 242«

Soil, property in, 12, 27.

South, the, 65.

South America, 226.

South Carolina, 56, 58, 66, 237;
frigate, 93.

Spain, 16, 17, 31, 32, 85, 144, 209,
211, 226.

Specie, 151, 166, 168, 169.

Speculation, 147, 163.

Speculators, 72.

Stamp Act, 41, 62, 192, 199.

State, the, 20.

State balances, 157, 158, i6o.

Statecraft, 11, 15, 16, 20, 21, 26.

Staten Island, 54.

State rights, 187.

Statesman, 19, 102.

Statesmanship, 114, 233, 245.

States of the Union, 51, 59, 71, 82,
112, 141,155,157,158, 182,187,
205, 230 ; large vs, small, 131 ;
paper issues by, 72, (See Debts.)

Stedman, 86.

Stevens, 3.

Stock-jobber, 188,

Stock notes, 164.

Stoddert, B., 253.

Stony Point, 100.

Storms, social, 48.

Sugar, 34, 37, Tj,

Sullivan, General, 137.

Sullivan, W., 258.

Supreme Court of the United

States, 138.
Sylla, 213.
System, tiie Colonial, 8, 12, 16-18,

21, 24, 32, 183, 200, 203, project
to overthrow, 32; the federal,
116, 134, 141 ; the funding, 147,
148 ; governmental, 244 ; the mer-
cantile, 20; the navigation, 18,

22, 181, 202-204 i ^c protec-
tive, 176, 183.

Tar and feathers, 47, 61, 193, 195.

Tariff of prices, t^^ tj^ 80.

Tartars, 97.

Taylor, J., 146, 169.

Tax, by depreciation, 151 ; system
of New York, 115.

Taxes, 83,113, 114, 120, 122, 135.
151, 161, 166, 167, 179, 180:
internal, 23; land, 38, 114; on
paper, paints, and glass, 24 ; op-
posed to liberty, 193 ; opposition
to, 135; poll, 38, 114; protec-
tive, 12, 175-183; revenue, 12,
23; stamp, 39; on Tories, 76.
(See Duties, Excise,)

Tea, 37, 76, 'j^j'y destruction of,
42, 45.

Technicalities, 10.

Tender laws, 73, 80, 136.

Tenure, 242.

Territories, 11, 12.

Terrorism, 197.

Test oath, 76.

Test of political theories, 11, 13.

Thomson, Charles, 21, 47, 207 ;
Papers, 21.

Thurman, 8.

Tories, 8, 46, 49, 51, 53, 75, 95,
113, 126-128, 195; proportion
of, 50; treatment of, 54-61, 75.

Town-meeting plan, 84.

28o

INDEX.

Townshend, T., Jr., 24.

Tracts, 44.

Tracy, U., 243.

Trade, 166, 167; "at a loss," 180;
balance of, 19, 20, 34, 177, 179;
carrying, 203; free, 5, 31, 174,
181-183, 201, 203 ; " follows the
flag,** 24 ; illicit, 18, 25 ; incon-
sistency as to, 181-183 ; logic of,
1 81-183 ; notions of, 17 ; philos-
ophy of, 63, 175, 177, 200; regu-
lation of, 21, 22; West India,
215.

Trading company, no.

Tragedy, classical, 246.

Tramps, 116.

Transportation, 175.

Treason, 55, 128, 197, 199.

Treasury, in, 144.

Treaties, 211, 217.

Treaty, of 1783, 126-128, 206, 209,
violations of, 205 ; with France,
1778,210,219; 1801,240; Jay's,
215, 216-220 ; of reciprocity, 180.

Trenton, 225, 236.

Trinity Church, 250.

Troops, American, 99 ; number of,
93 ; quality of, 99, too.

Troops, British, 44 ; transit of, 209.

Trumbull, J., 135.

Tryon, Governor, 55.

Turgot, 24, 25, 33, 109.

Ungenerosity, ioi.

Union, passim.

Unit, political, 20 ; of account, 170.

Valley Forge, 85-87.

Van Rensselaer, J. R., 244.

Vatican, 90.

Vehmgericht, 42.

Vergennes, 33, 89, 102, 126, 201.

Vermont, 135.
Veto, 12, 131, 132.
Virginia, 7, 129, 184, 187, 191;
arming, 230; Convention, 137.
Virginians, 253.
Virulence, 230.
Vituperation, 186.

Wages, 33, 181, 182.

Wagons, 95.

Wallingford, Conn., 74.

Walpole, Horace, 22, 26, 39.

War, 17, 42, 69, 222, 224; Articles
of, 92 ; civil, 137 ; the Civil, 99,
141, 245 ; commercial, 4, 5, 30,
62-69, 187, 204, 210, 213, 214;
devastation of, 49 ; between Eng-
land and France, 15, 38; with
France, 225-230, 232 ; of French
Revolution, 208; with Indians,
253 ; of the Revolution, 15, no,
155, 156, 191, 205, 206 (see Revo-
lution)'^ second, with England,
15, 142, 229.

Washington, George, passim ;
Mrs., 80, 255.

Washington City, 43.

Waste, 85-787.

Watchwords, n.

Waterbury, Colonel, 58.

Wayne, General, 96.

Webster, D., 62, 177.

Webster, P., 72, 80.

Wedderbum, 7.

Western posts, 205.

West Indies, 68, 180, 203, 214.

Westmoreland, Va., 41.

Wethersfield, Conn., 41.

Whigs, 46, 49, 50, 54, 55, 58, 59,

76, 95-
Whiskey-poles, 193.
Wilkes, John, 51.
Wilkinson, General, 225.

INDEX,

281

Wilson, James, 83.

Winsor's History, 16.

Wolcott, Oliver, 215, 218, 234, 246.

Wolfe, General, 15.

Worcester, 56.

Wraxball, Sir N. W., 202.

Wyoming, 55.

X Y Z Papers, 222.

Yates, R., 134.
Yellow fever, 225.
Yorktown, 107.
Youthfulness, 88, 102.

MAKERS OF AMERICA.

The following is a list of the subjects and authors so
far arranged for in this series. The volumes will
he published at the uniform price of 75 cents y and
will appear in rapid succession : —

Christopher Columbus (i 436-1 506), and the Discov-
ery of the New World. By Charles Kendall
Adams, President of Cornell University.

John "Winthrop (1588- 1640), First Governor of
the Massachusetts Colony. By Rev. Joseph H.

TWICHELL.

Robert Morris (i 734-1 806), Superintendent of Finance
under the Continental Congress. By Prof. William
G. Sumner, of Yale University.

James Edward Oglethorpe (1689-1785), and the Found-
ing of the Georgia Colony. By Henry Bruce,
Esq.

John Hughes, D.D, (1797-1864), First Archbishop of
-New -York : a Representative American Catholic.
By Henry A. Brann, D.D.

Robert Fulton (i 765-181 5): His Life and its Results.
By Prof. R. H. Thurston, of Cornell University.

^Francis Higginson (1587- 1630), Puritan, Author of
" New England's Plantation," etc. By Thomas W.
Higginson.

2 MAKERS OF AMERICA.

Peter Stuyvesant (i 602-1 682), and the Dutch Settle-
ment of New- York. By Bayard Tuckerman,
Esq., author of a " Life of General Lafayette, "
editor of the " Diary of Philip Hone," etc., etc.

ThomaB Hooker (i 586-1647), Theologian, Founder of
the Hartford Colony. By George L. Walker,
D.D.

Charles Sumner (1811-1874), Statesman. By Anna
L. Dawes.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), Third President of the
United States. By James Schouler, Esq., author
of "A History of the United States under the
Constitution."

William "White (i 748-1 836), Chaplain of the Continen-
tal Congress, Bishop of Pennsylvania, President of
the Convention to organize the Protestant Episcopal
Church in America. By Rev. Julius H. Ward,
with an Introduction by Right Rev. Henry C. Potter,
D.D., Bishop of New- York.

Jean Baptiste Lemoine, sieur de Bienville (i 680-1 768),
French Governor of Louisiana, Founder of New
Orleans. By Grace King, author of " Monsieur
Motte.*'

Alexander Hamilton (i 757-1 804), Statesman, Finan-
cier, Secretary of the Treasury. By Prof. William
G. Sumner, of Yale University

Father Juniper Serra (171 3- 1784), and the Franciscan
Missions in California. By John Gilmary Shea,
LL.D.

Cotton Mather (1663-1728), Theologian, Author, Be-
liever in Witchcraft and the Supernatural. By Prof.
Barrett Wendell, of Harvard University.

MAKERS OF AMERICA. 3

Robert Cavelier, sieur de La Salle (1643-1687), Ex-
plorer of the Northwest and the Mississippi. By
Edward G. Mason, Esq., President of the Histori-
cal Society of Chicago, author of ** Illinois*' in the
Commonwealth Series.

Thomas Nelson (1738-1789), Governor of Virginia,
General in the Revolutionary Army. Embracing a
Picture of Virginian Colonial Life. By Thomas
Nelson Page, author of " Mars Chan," and other
popular stories.

George and CeciliuB Calvert, Barons Baltimore of
Baltimore (1605-1676), and the Founding of the
Maryland Colony. By William Hand Browne,
editor of " The Archives of Maryland."

Sir William Johnson (i7i5-i774)> and The Six Na-
tions. By William Elliot Griffis, D.D., author
of " The Mikado's Empire," etc. , etc.

Sam. Houston (1793- 1862), and the Annexation of
Texas. By Henry Bruce, Esq.

Joseph Henry, LL.D. (i 797-1878), Savant and Natural
Philosopher. By Frederic H. Betts, Esq.

Ralph "Waldo Emerson. By Prof. Herman Grimm,
author of " The Life of Michael Angelo," " The Life
and Times of Goethe," etc.

DODD, MEAD, & COMPANY,

tSS and 765 Broadway ^ New York.

Internet Archive Audio

Featured

Top

Images

Featured

Top

Software

Featured

Top

Texts

Featured

Top

Video

Featured

Top

Mobile Apps

Browser Extensions

Archive-It Subscription

Save Page Now

Full text of "Alexander Hamilton"

See other formats